


Paracosm

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blindfolds, Canon-Typical Violence, Dismemberment, Domesticity, Double Penetration, Gags, Gore, M/M, Memory Palace, Multi, Murder, Oral, Restraints, Rimming, Rough Sex, Shower Sex, Table Sex, Threesome, Triad - Freeform, pretentious wordplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-05 00:47:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4159251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I couldn’t very well make such a blatant suggestion and leave it close-ended.” Will’s voice bridges monotone, like a sudden additional string struck on the guitar, and Hannibal opens his eyes to lift them to the man before him. </i>My husband<i> as Hannibal had introduced him, and Anthony’s lips had pursed to hide a pleased smile.</i></p><p>
  <i>Hannibal watches Will spear another acorn with a little too much force and bring it to his lips. “It would be inexcusably rude.”</i>
</p><p><i>Will chews carefully, sets his wrists against the table. “Another thing my </i>husband<i> rarely tolerates.”</i></p><p>Perhaps, in some other world, it was that kind of party. An ongoing series within the slowly shattering walls of Hannibal Lecter's memory palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anthony has stolen our hearts. That is all.
> 
> (Beta'd by the extraordinary [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!)
> 
>  
> 
> [There are timestamps!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/292619)

“Is it that kind of party?”

Anthony’s accent rolls, like a brook over stones, or wine into a crystal glass. Amusement and anticipation, brows up. He is, in truth, the most interesting thing about Italy so far, well worth the invitation to dinner, well worth the possibility of actually walking him to the door, not dragging him from it, at the end.

Hannibal blinks, languid, and tilts his smile to his plate as he waits. He can’t give the answer, it is not a question asked of him, and he can feel the shift beneath the table, a nervous twitch of agitation. He can hear the intake of breath just before the answer comes and he closes his eyes to listen.

“I couldn’t very well make such a blatant suggestion and leave it close-ended,” Will’s voice bridges monotone, like a sudden additional string struck on the guitar, and Hannibal opens his eyes to lift them to the man before him. _My husband_ as Hannibal had introduced him, and Anthony’s lips had pursed to hide a pleased smile. Hannibal watches Will spear another acorn with a little too much force and bring it to his lips. “It would be inexcusably rude.”

Will chews carefully, sets his wrists against the table. “Another thing my _husband_ rarely tolerates.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Anthony murmurs with a smile, leaning nearer to Will as if in conspiracy, though his eyes dart back towards Hannibal. “But I can assure you, I am a consummate houseguest. Polite, hospitable, and entirely unselfish.”

Brows lifting beneath dark curls of hair, Will watches as a curious pleasure eases up the muscles beneath Hannibal’s eyes.

“I will put our dessert on ice, then,” he agrees, unfolding his napkin from his lap and touching it once to each corner of his lips. “I did not expect Mr. Dimmond to provide the promise of something far more pleasing to the palate.”

The poet’s smile widens, gregarious and bright. “I hope that I can meet both your expectations in that regard, especially considering I’ve not kept to a strict diet of acorns and oysters.”

“Perhaps, then, you can do the tasting,” Hannibal suggests, bending at the waist to take up his plate to return it to the kitchen. He watches, delighted, as Will levels a look on the poet, slowly moves his eyes to lift to Hannibal when he comes near, setting his cutlery back to his plate - wrong - before taking up the napkin to wipe his mouth as well.

“Perhaps he can,” Will agrees, letting his lips curl up at the corners, almost catlike, but entirely disingenuous. His eyes narrow not in delight but in calculation, a resigned sort of exhaustion behind them, as though the very idea of such a pleasant experience brings thoughts of dullness and boredom to mind. Will licks his lips and leans forward, then sets his elbows up on the table and clasps his hands beneath his chin. “It’s been a while since you’ve had someone to compare tastes with. And Mr. Dimmond is sure to have a much more sophisticated palate than my Southern upbringing provides.”

“Am I?” Anthony laughs, and something in Will’s eyes relaxes.

“I’ve encountered many Englishmen with a taste for the unique,” Will clarifies, clicking the consonants and lifting his eyes to Hannibal when he returns from the kitchen.

“You are both _that_ , to be certain,” he agrees with a laugh, folding his napkin over once before setting it to the table. Anthony lets his eyes travel up the length of the doctor’s arm as Hannibal takes his plate too, lingering just a beat too long, and as he turns away with a wry amusement, the poet returns his curiosity to Will.

“I understand you met my husband at a party.”

“You understand correctly,” Anthony says. “In Paris, at a book release party for an object of our mutual derision.”

“And was that the extent of your mutuality that night?”

“Oh, not at all,” he exclaims, with a brash laugh. “We shared champagne and whispered conversations, mostly disdainful, and stood no nearer than you and I now before bidding each other good evening. That said, I’ve found that, contrary to having a great deal of positive things in common, the best company is often that with which one shares a great deal of dislikes.”

“That doesn’t bode well,” Will supposes. He allows just a breath, a single note of laughter as he reaches for his wine and it is, of course, Anthony who moves first, letting a hand settle atop Will’s with no more hurry or weight than an autumn leaf. He strokes, once only, across his knuckles.

“And you,” Anthony asks, brows drawing ever so slightly inward. “Did you meet your husband through cruelty or kindness?”

Will’s fingers splay beneath the warm unfamiliar ones and he flexes them just once before finally reaching for the wine. It is pleasant, summery and cool, and most likely some ungodly vintage that Hannibal could talk about for hours before Will swallowed him down to shut him up. The thought draws the tip of his tongue between Will’s lips as he considers his answer.

“We met through our mutual distaste for tastelessness,” Will weaves, tilting his head with a slow blink as the other searches his face with curious eyes, smile pulling warm again when Will allows his own to grow. “He drove me insane,” Will adds after a moment. “A reciprocal desire for more intellectual conversation outside the field of academia had me hardly liable to let him free,” Hannibal adds, returning to his seat, amused when Will does not even blink in his direction, entire body coiled and turned towards the young poet, fingers curling over his wine glass in slow, deliberate patterns, as though one were wringing a neck or seeking out a pulse to stop.

“He had me imprisoned,” Will says, watches the way Anthony’s brows rise in surprise.

“Poetically speaking?” he asks, a laugh hushing his words as Will draws his bottom lip between his teeth and snorts softly.

“Of course.”

“Meeting you now, one could understand the motivation,” the poet allows. He exchanges a glance to Hannibal for an inclination of the doctor’s head, and a candlelight smile warms Anthony’s expression. “You love with savagery,” he observes. “Madness and imprisonment are ungentle terms to refer to the highest state attainable by man.”

“Poetically speaking,” Hannibal responds, but Anthony’s smile flickers wider, with a flash of white teeth.

“You overpower in your passion, and yet it is not a tyranny. As with your food, I imagine, you demand that you are met at a particular plane and yet those who pass your tests - wine and oysters, Dante and Scarlatti - are elevated, as demigods to gods, for having done so. You give, then, as much as you demanded - more so, I think, were I a betting man,” Anthony murmurs, his smile as irresistible to restrain as the purr of his accent and the draw of his eyes, dark and lovely.

“Love should be generous,” Hannibal considers.

Anthony leans forward towards the doctor now, limber with wine and the promise hanging sweet as honey in the air between them. Unlike with Will, though, he does not touch right away, so much as tilt his head as if to allow and beckon it to him.

“ _Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,_ ” he muses.

“And you, Mr. Dimmond,” asks Hannibal. “With what do you love?”

This pulls the younger man’s voice into a laugh robust as the red wine that he sips to swallow it down. Uncouth enough to be charming, refined enough to be a fascination, the poet wipes his lips clean with a brush of his fingers, and sets the glass aside. He inches his chair back, palms against the table, and sighs.

“Only my words, until someone takes them from me.”

Hannibal looks delighted, almost giddy in the way his eyes narrow and his lips part enough to show his teeth. Will directs his eyes to him in a lazy sort of understanding and considers how animals show their teeth in a gesture of dominance, be they yawns, growls or smiles.

“A man who can make love to a mind is certainly worth trusting with a body,” Will says, ignoring how Hannibal’s smile widens at this, how he moves, in a dance they all understand, to reach for Anthony’s hand as he moves it away to reach for Will instead. It is a synchronicity that feels almost electric between them.

“Will you trust me with yours?”

“Will you steal my words away?” Will counters, setting his glass to the table and shifting, almost leaning over the table, close enough, now, to have Anthony’s eyes hood to look at him so near.

“Would that I could take such liberties.”

“By all means,” Hannibal gestures, lifts his glass to press the rim to his bottom lip as he watches Will and the poet both, near enough to touch. “Steal them, if he lets them be stolen.”

“I could gift them.”

“Terrible,” Hannibal sighs. 

“Generous.” Will turns his head, eyes always on the poet, mind always on the mirror image of himself, never in his own head. It doesn’t matter. Will is everything and nothing all at once - it makes him ruthless, it makes him brutal and unendingly passionate. Another sigh and Will sits closer, at once pushing himself higher in dominance and stance both. “An olive branch of sorts. Or a test. I will steal them back if I must.”

Anthony’s gaze follows the movement of Will’s tongue against his lips, parting them for a breath.

“There are truths in the words of madmen,” he murmurs. “Tell me, does he drive you still to insanity, despite the illumination that comes from such intimacy?”

Will’s laugh is only a sigh, as he answers, “Always.”

It is enough, then, perhaps too much - the offer of challenge and temptation both, intoxicating and irresistible. It is enough for Anthony to close the last lingering distance between them, and bring their mouths to meet. On their mouths mingle sea-brine and the tannins of wine, sweeping slowly together and underlaid by the rising thrum of heartbeats and low sounds that resonate into harmony. He lifts a hand, stroking the backs of his fingers down Will’s softly furred cheeks, and Will’s lips part, yielding to allow the touch of the poet’s tongue against his own. It is no immediate claiming, no boisterous show of dominance or authority. He seeks into the kiss as thoughtfully as he sought through his words, and with no less affection.

It is a true treat to watch him. Hannibal could, and does, every day, even in the most mundane of things. Reading, doing the dishes, sleepy in the mornings and fuelled with passion as he rocks his hips against Hannibal and rides him until both are breathless and the bed has beaten marks into the wall behind it.

Will brings a hand up to mirror the one against him, gentle, fingers curled a little to stroke, and test and touch before they spread and scrape gently through the soft beard the man wears. They part for air and Will ducks his head as he stands, moves to rest his weight back against the edge of the table and lean down to kiss Anthony again, deeper, this time, curious how the pressure will be taken, how the change will be allowed.

There is a hum and little more, and Will’s lips curve once more. He leans, enough that Anthony has to lean back, and in a graceful movement Will sets one leg over Anthony’s thighs to hold himself standing in a straddle over the poet. The kiss does not break, Will doesn’t let it, not until his hands have slicked down the warm skin of Anthony’s neck to the loose scarf he wears. Will’s fingers twist it, curl it once, twice, over each palm and tug, sharp enough that the air is pulled from the younger man before him, enough that when he looks up, Will looks back, eyes narrowed.

When next Anthony moves, it is to press his lips reverent to Will’s pulse, his hands coming to rest against Will’s hips where he stands so close. Will does not let go of the scarf, does not relent in the pressure, though it is hardly uncomfortable. He does, instead, roll his head to the side, eyes hooded and barely open, warm and dark beneath as he regards Hannibal and smiles. Slow. Languid. Lazy. He arches his neck further and allows a low moan of pleasure as Anthony presses his lips beneath his jaw and sucks.

“That kind of party,” murmurs Anthony, gasping out a little laugh as Will tugs the scarf that much tighter. Just enough to cut short his clever words, just enough to send a spark of dizziness behind his eyes. And just long enough for Anthony to let his eyes hood and teeth show and the soft skin of Will’s neck to catch between them in a gentle scrape.

Hannibal watches, the near-reverent movement of the poet’s hands against his husband’s suit, slipping him free of his tailored attire button by button. He draws a breath, silent but felt burning in his lungs, as Anthony pushes his palms over Will’s stomach, running them over his ribs and tugging to free his shirt tails. With appreciation, Hannibal relishes the speed of it, not a hurried fumbling thing, but confident in what he desires.

The flicker of Anthony’s smile widens as he slips a hand to the back of Will’s head and drags him into a deeper kiss. Lips crush and split against each other, parting wide to allow clearance for the tangle of their tongues and their shared, low moans. Still held, the poet does not notice how white Will’s knuckles have become in clenching the scarf, holding it firm without pulling it tighter; he does not see how Will resists the urges Hannibal has created in him for the ones that Anthony’s company has stirred instead.

They part with a rattling breath, a gasp, a laugh as Will leans back against the antique wood, straddled between poet and table. He tugs Anthony nearer again and the man follows - he would follow, Hannibal knows, even without the lead. Slender fingers hold Will’s hips in place, and Will’s belly is bared in inches, shirt caught on the bridge of Anthony’s nose as he mouths against smooth stomach.

And it is then that Will lets go of one side of the scarf, hand down to press to the man's soft curls, dragging his nails over Anthony's scalp and snaring from him a moan. The sensation is novel, bearded cheek and different lips, not as hot as Hannibal's and not as demanding but very pleasant. Will sucks his stomach in, grins when the poet leans closer and hums against him, eyes flicking up to watch Will where he stands over him.

It is a show, for now, not yet a party, and Hannibal watches Will bring his free hand up to loosen his tie, to work it from its knot and let it rest loose around his neck. Button by button his shirt is peeled free from the bottom up as Anthony moves higher over Will’s body, and when he gently digs his fingers into Will's sides to bring him close, Will unfurls away from him.

Like smoke, like water.

Will brings one foot up, presses the toe of his shoe to the seat between Anthony's legs, clucking his tongue when the other does not immediately spread. Slowly, trousers sliding across the wooden seat, he widens, eyes still up, narrowed into a grin, and Anthony slips the shirt around Will’s sides to touch his skin instead. Will sets his hands back and with a graceful arch, hoists himself up to sit on the edge of the table.

Anthony laughs and follows and nuzzles the center of his chest as Will curls both hands in his hair again.

"Do you suppose we're putting on a good performance?" he asks, voice lower, rougher, and he turns his head to regard Hannibal, ear pressed to Will’s heart as he hums.

"He is quite the fan of erotica. The slow movements, the anticipation," Will murmurs. He trains his eyes on Hannibal as well, coy smile back again, and draws his knees up a little more. Gently, Will sets his feet against the other's thighs, at once balancing himself and holding the poet down. "Rarely of pornography. I doubt we're boring him." Will raises an amused eyebrow, as his husband hums assent.

“It is as though I am watching artists at work, outlining a painting upon a canvas,” Hannibal says. His chair scrapes the floor as he stands and languidly works upon his waistcoat. “I imagine I will soon see the muse at work, when summoned by your own hands, you begin to move outside such thoughtful, patient strokes.”

Anthony tries to move towards Will, laughing low when he is held in place by firm feet on his thighs. Delighted by his own obedience, he unlaces Will’s polished shoes and removes them, to instead cradle his ankles and slip his fingertips beneath the hem of his pants. He bows his head and traces kisses along the man’s pressed suit pants and lingers on the inside of Will’s knee, gaze lifting to the doctor who circles closer in steady strides.

“Romans believed the muses - _genii_ \- to be outside forces,” suggests the poet. “Skilled and clever beings who moved the artists in ways that even the artist could not predict.”

Hannibal lifts his chin with a drawn breath, preening beneath the praise, reveling in the invitation echoed in Will’s hooded gaze. Without breaking the eye contact that Will grants to him, Hannibal runs a hand through the back of Anthony’s hair, baring his neck in an arch tight enough that Will can see the man swallow before parting his lips to welcome Hannibal’s kiss. It plunges deep, drawing a moan from the poet beneath as their mouths twist together, and Anthony spans his hands up Will’s knees, his thighs, higher still to grasp his belt and tug it free. A thread of saliva pulls thin and clear between he and Hannibal before a gentle tightening of fingers in Anthony’s hair tilts him back towards Will, who bends to taste the doctor from the poet’s mouth.

“I must admit that you’ve made me a believer in the good doctor’s regimen,” Anthony notes, smile widening as he eases into another kiss, murmuring against Will’s lips. “You are delicious.”

Will hums his pleasure, and bends to take Anthony’s lower lip between his teeth to tug. Sharp enough to pull a sound from him, not enough to speed them from their lazy pace, not enough, yet, to break the pleasant tension building between them, like the hummed note of a struck glass or a trace of a knife over skin, not yet drawing blood. Behind him, Hannibal gently takes the scarf to slide it from Anthony’s neck, susurrus of fabric over pale skin, as Will sets his toes on either side of the poet’s thighs and begins to work the buttons of his shirt open.

Hannibal's fingers trace stark sinews and warm skin, caressing the man in front of him as he does his theremin, pulling notes and shivers and breathless little gasps with every motion. As Will prepares him to be bared, Hannibal bares him, shirt and jacket removed together and pulled back enough for the poet’s arms to catch behind his back. Another kiss, then, to Anthony’s neck, his jaw, to his lips once more, and then without warning, Hannibal sets a foot against the chair and drags it closer, a harsh note in the silence of the room, to accommodate Will to bend and taste along the smooth panes of Anthony’s chest.

"There is something to be said for the method in _his_ madness," Will murmurs, hands running parallel and tickling down Anthony’s sides as he is yet held pinned, thumbs gently counting ribs. " _The blind leading the blind, the deaf dragging the muted._ "

With the glimmer of a smile, Hannibal slips a hand over Anthony’s eyes, as if on Will’s command. His other follows the fine trail of dark hair leading downward, languidly working open Anthony’s belt and trousers.

“Unfair,” laughs Anthony, a terribly pleased sound. Will closes his lips around a small, stiff nipple, hardening it further with teeth and tongue, and Anthony squirms not in resistance but in delight, still blind to them both. “I was enjoying watching you - both of you.”

Hannibal skims his hand along Anthony’s backside when he lifts to allow his pants off, entirely pliant beneath their ministrations, welcoming of every touch and sensation that they share with him. He moans, throaty and thick, as his cock springs free and stands stiff against his belly, and Will’s hands curl together around it. Watching the play of his husband’s hands over another’s body, Hannibal’s eyes darken, and his teeth snare against the poet’s bared throat, lips closing into a firm suck.

He leaves a mark there as he parts, one hand still across Anthony’s eyes, the other reaching to stroke once through Will’s hair.

“One discovers new truths when certain perceptions are taken away,” Hannibal says. “When we are blind, we are forced to experience in new ways, and discover greater depths to our senses and empathies.”

Will’s eyes lift, blue and bright, and he allows a small smile, as much gentle as it is warning, before bending to free Anthony’s arms from his sleeves. He shrugs off his own shirt while the poet kicks off his shoes with a laugh, slips his pants the rest of the way off. Bared, now, fully, between them and entirely delighted to be.

Anthony reaches back to hook an arm around Hannibal’s neck to pull him closer again, lips parting when again he feels teeth against his skin. Will watches, now, as Hannibal devours the man with as much care, as much desire as does Will himself. It is pleasant. Powerful. Will reaches for Anthony’s free hand, kissing along the fingertips and palm, turning his head into the soft caress he gets from him, and he sighs his own pleasure over the poet’s arm as he kisses down his wrist and further still. Across his collarbone and to Hannibal's lips, Will directs Anthony’s hand between his own legs, spreading them wider and pressing his palm to the bulge there as Hannibal takes his breath.

It is intoxicating, to be so stimulated both by words and touch together, it is rare. Once in a while they invite someone to their bed, once in a while they have a feast after. But this, as Will breaks the kiss with Hannibal and seeks Anthony’s lips with hungry abandon and a low moan when clever fingers work his button and fly to bare him, this is something different. This is worth savoring.

Will slips his hand over Hannibal’s where it rests against gently closed eyes, and allows him the freedom to touch, now, as well. Carefully coordinated motions and movements, a dance learned long ago between two men who knew the steps but had only recently found a worthy partner.

Their clothes slip from them in stitches, expensive and finely pressed, dropped to the floor without a thought. Anthony’s fingers splay across Will’s cock, standing rigid before him, they curl and stretch velvety skin in a languorous tug. His eyes blink wide when Will returns his sight to him, and sighs a laugh as if in disbelief that he is here, held in wonderful sway between two men who have bewitched him.

When he stands it is a lazy, feline unfurling, taller even than Hannibal, but far more lean. Taut muscle twitches beneath smooth skin, pale and hairless but for the coarse curls between his legs and the fine hair across his limbs and cheeks. Anthony turns a drowsy, pleased look back to the doctor as his clothes too drop away, revealing a substantial strength and thickly haired chest. He snares Hannibal’s hand from his waist and with a sigh, presses the doctor’s palm to his cock, dragging Hannibal against his back as he leans forward to sink into a kiss with Will.

From a simmer to a boil, their kiss now snares fiercely together. Want and heat and acceptance burns between them, lips caught between teeth, tongues tracing their kin. He lifts a hand to pull Will’s curls straight and bend him back, fingers circling tighter around the head of Will’s cock, spasming into a pleasant shiver when Hannibal grasps Anthony firmly in return. The older man’s cock rocks tickling and light against Anthony’s ass.

No longer a show, but a party indeed.

Their mouths click as they draw apart, a low sound of need pressed instead to Hannibal’s mouth over Anthony’s shoulder. If he feels any reservation to having such dalliances with near-strangers, it does not show. If he feels any fear - some innate animal instinct - of their capabilities, it is unseen. To the contrary, he is warm and coiling, thrusting into the hot tunnel of Hannibal’s hand, moaning into his mouth when Will sucks his collarbone. He laughs, again, dizzy with pleasure.

“I am,” Anthony manages, “entirely at the service of your hospitality.”

Will laughs, and it is genuine, warm. Whatever reservations had pulled his smile plastic earlier that evening have fallen away under soft fingers and warm lips.

"We are nothing if not hospitable," he says, watching Hannibal's lips quirk behind Anthony before he slips a hand into his hair again and strokes against his scalp, fisting the poet’s cock deliberately slow. Anthony slips a hand back behind himself to press Hannibal closer to him, arching his back just enough to feel Hannibal’s cock hard against him.

Before him, Will rests back against the table, a slow lean, and works his pants from his legs to drop them to the floor. He is hard, cock dark and curved and resting against his stomach, and with a lazy stretch, he spreads his legs to hook one over the corner of the table, the other around behind Anthony’s knee to draw him closer.

Will watches Hannibal, watches his hunger and his need, makes sure he sees as he moves to lie back fully, exposed and spread like a feast before the two men. He brings one hand up to curl in his own hair, the other tapping warm against his chest as he hears Anthony swallow, hears Hannibal hum his approval and murmur just one word:

"Taste."

Anthony bends, hands spread to either side of Will’s narrow hips, palms flat on the table. His smile quirks crooked, eyes narrowed, as he bends his back deeply to press flush against Hannibal’s cock behind him. A twitch of hips from the doctor shoves him forward and Anthony goes with a sigh, grinning before he passes his lips over Will’s stomach, furred cheek brushing his cock to its base. The poet turns his head at an angle, and wraps his lips around the base, flushed thick with blood. Sucking kisses against it, he breathes in deep and sighs out slow, a moan vibrating from his mouth through Will’s groin, working up with worshipful kisses inch by inch.

Without his hands, Anthony ducks his head and takes the tip of Will’s cock into his mouth, tugging it deeper with his lips, his tongue, and firm, wet suction. The heat and pressure of it curls Will’s back from the table and twists a high sound into his breath. The push of Hannibal’s cock against Anthony’s ass becomes insistent, a steady rub generating friction against his length and the poet’s hole.

But Anthony can play too, it seems, when with a devilish glint in his eyes he lets Will’s cock pop from between his lips, and lifts a hand only to wipe away the sheen of spit from his lips. He pushes his hands against Will’s muscular thighs, spilling him higher onto the table, and with relish, wraps his lips against Will’s opening instead, sucking rough against tender muscle.

Will jerks, bucks up, a curse slipping through his lips in a hiss before his face breaks into a smile, teeth gritted and hand pressed up against his eyes. It feels so, so good, and any pretense of lack of pleasure before wipes away as Will slips his hand up into his hair again and moans his appreciation.

The poet watches.

Hannibal watches. 

And Will allows himself to give them a show of movement and trembling, taut muscles and grabbing hands. He resists, for as long as he can, before burying his fingers in Anthony’s hair and holding him down, not demanding but needy, wanting. A whine, a shiver, and Will’s jaw slackens on quick breaths, his throat works in rough, heavy swallows.

Hannibal hums, turning his head to nuzzle into Anthony’s hair, breathing in his sweet smell, his arousal and musk, Will’s mingling with it in the most pleasing way as he squirms beneath him.

“I think, Mr. Dimmond, that you have succeeded in stealing his words,” he murmurs, kissing behind his ear before biting against sensitive skin and rubbing against him harder. He can wait. He is patient, but the need grows with every gasp from Will on the table, from every pleased hum from the man between his legs.

Anthony grins against Will’s thigh, nipping one, then the other, back and forth until he kisses once more against the quivering ring of his opening. Will spreads wider, trying to shift himself closer to the agile tongue that curls inside him, teasing him open. When Will’s voice breaks into a moan, it is no longer the stern voice of a man stabbing acorns on his plate - it is a helpless sob, vibrating up to the fingers that clench into his own curled hair.

In reward, Hannibal leans heavy over Anthony. Spine curling, he grinds rhythmic against the poet, and seeks between his legs with both hands, one to cup his balls and the other circling firm around his cock. He imagines how they must appear, tangled together with limbs and mouths, a depraved and beautiful triptych that would do little to discourage one from the sins of vice. Gathering glistening droplets of precome on his fingertips, he smooths down Anthony’s foreskin and hums when the poet gasps, the kiss between he and Will broken and replaced by a heady groan.

“Do your dinner parties always offer such an embarrassment of riches?” Anthony murmurs, squeezing Will’s cock in a steady stroke and bringing it to his lips. He passes them across it, lips shining as he touches a kiss to the tip, before glancing back to Hannibal with a wry smile.

“Only to those whose tastes are developed enough to appreciate it,” Hannibal says.

“They are,” Will pants, arm across his eyes, “exceedingly rare.”

“You’ve spoilt me for choices,” sighs the poet, put-upon even as he works Will’s cock past his lips, out again, teasing.

“Mmm - why choose?” Will asks, breath hitching as he ducks his head to watch Anthony tease him with soft lips and languid sucks. With narrowed eyes, the poet pulls back, smiles when a hand comes around his throat and strokes there. He raises his chin.

“Surely that would be greedy,” he says. “Frightfully rude. And I’ve been told rudeness isn’t tolerated at the table,” he smiles, that crooked, beautiful thing, and draws his hands up and down Will’s quivering thighs. “Or on it, for that matter.”

“Consider it an indulgence, then,” Hannibal suggests behind him. He touches another kiss to the delicate curls of hair at the base of his neck before he gently pushes, guides, until, with a laugh, the poet rests his hands flat on the table and pulls himself up onto it. Knees between Will’s thighs, as his legs curl to hold Anthony closer, palms sliding down the smooth table to rest around Will’s head.

“We’d best be careful to avoid spilling the condiments not yet taken away,” Anthony murmurs. Will just shakes his head with a whispered curse and tugs him down to kiss, pulling the musky taste of himself, the softness of Anthony beneath, to his tongue. Will’s hands slip from his hair down his shoulders, feeling the way the muscles move and bend, the way the poet adjusts himself atop Will as the other slowly curls his legs up over his hips and coaxes him to lay, not kneel, over him.

Hands and seeking fingers, hot breaths and Will’s grin as Hannibal draws a hand over Will’s leg, up to his thigh, caressing and worshiping, leaving light nail marks on pale skin. Will rocks up, rubbing his cock against Anthony’s, and slips a hand between them to grasp them both together and stroke.

Anthony rounds his spine, pushing deep into Will’s hand, their cocks whispering together, mouths touching, parted, sharing breath and breaking into matching grins. But no sooner than Anthony finds his rhythm, than Will lets the heat in his belly spread and coil with their matching movements, than the poet’s voice ripples into a moan. Hannibal spreads him with the flat of his hand and pushes against the heat of Anthony’s ass, fingers curling pressure against his hole.

“If my hosts would like me to indulge,” Anthony says, snatching kisses from Will between his words, little things, flirty and sweet, “then it would be discourteous to say no.”

With a firm hand in his hair, Anthony bends back as Hannibal moves him, held in an exquisite purgatory. Which direction leads to Hell and which ascends to Heaven isn’t clear, but both from where the poet stands with no philosopher to guide his way, the paths appear much the same and he laughs. With no more than a finger breaching him and a smile raised beneath his eyes, Hannibal asks a silent question, and watches as a rare blush ripens Anthony’s cheeks.

“Both,” he implores. “I want you both at once. Don’t make me choose.”

Will groans, twisting his wrist around them both, and with his free hand reaching back to graze the bottle of wine still on the table with sticky fingertips. 

“Indulgent,” he murmurs, delighted, as above him Hannibal turns the poet to him to kiss again, deep and slow, tongues sliding together, lips parting just enough to see them. Hannibal’s hand seeks down against the young body he holds, fingers tweaking a nipple, rubbing his thumb over the sensitive nub. His other hand he curls over Anthony’s mouth and sighs praise when he parts his lips to take rough fingers between them.

Beneath, Will watches, continues to languidly stroke them both, deliberate in thumbing the soft foreskin on Anthony’s cock before drawing it down and working the slit instead. The words had pulled a shiver over his entire body, a delicious promise he had not had for years, if then. A rare moment of genuine enjoyment of their company, a rare moment of perhaps wanting that company to leave here alive, and - strangest of all - be invited back again.

He arches back, smile wide, and slowly turns the bottle of wine to him, soft scrapes of the base against the tabletop. Closer and closer, until he can properly grasp it and slide it down the table towards his hips, towards Hannibal’s reaching fingers that twine with Will’s before he takes the offering.

It is offered to Anthony first, brought to his ready lips to darken them with a pull of wine, tipped carefully enough to let him swallow and quick enough that scarlet streaks bead down from the corners of his mouth. Before he can sputter, smile widening, Hannibal removes the bottle and inhales the breath that Anthony sighs out, rich with notes of cherry and chocolate, age and tannins. Hannibal cannot recall the last time he found a partner so intoxicating, with the exception of Will, who has always - in every way - been an exception.

“You praised us for our generosity,” Hannibal says, “but I think we might praise you for the same.”

Anthony groans when Hannibal’s fingers, slick with spit, part him wide and press inward. Rocking motions penetrate him, finding no wince of resistance or clench of uncertainty. He would not have expected it, considering how open the poet has been with them in every other way. It would stand to reason that his body would mirror the ready acceptance he has shown in mind and heart.

The poet pushes back against Hannibal’s fingers, hands scrabbling for purchase on Will’s chest beneath as a second is added and both are curled firm enough that his body goes rigid. As with the theremin, Hannibal works in two ways at once. As the splay of his fingers inside Anthony pitches his voice higher, the tilt of wine against Will’s cupped hand earns a resonant hum from the former investigator. It is hardly enough, the thin liquid with which Will reddens his cock, but despite the discomfort that Anthony opens himself to readily, the sight of wine on Will’s cock is a striking scene, dark as blood.

None will move enough to retire to the bedroom, none can stand a moment without snaring a kiss from a partner, without pressing hands to chests and cocks to bellies and fingers to thighs. Will can suffer the unyielding table against his back for this. Anthony can make do without proper lubricant. And Hannibal - 

Hannibal would suffer any amount of inconvenience to watch Will coil with such ravenous need beneath them.

He meets the blue gaze, nearly black with pupil, that settles on his own, putting the bottle aside to rest a slick hand on Anthony’s shoulder, and the other on his own cock, lining himself up with a sigh. Will untangles his legs from Anthony’s, who moves his knees to spread wide to either side of Will’s thighs, laying lean and heavy against him and kissing through the anticipation of pain that flutters his heart faster when Will, too, reaches to align himself.

“Slow,” Will purrs, as much to Hannibal as to reassure Anthony, who kisses him softly again, shivering before he rests still. It is Will who breaches first, just enough, just the tip before pulling out again and slowly stroking himself as Hannibal teases just the same. It is still a game between them, less two predators and prey, now, though, and more as equals. Feeling out one and understanding another, touch and press and pressure, until Will snares soft curls in his fingers and tugs Anthony down to kiss him, open-mouthed and raw, and pushes in.

It is slow, the pressure enough to keep their pace if not the sounds the poet makes between them. Hitched breaths and little groans, high and cut short by either kisses or nuzzles down against Will’s chest. Will watches, he cards his fingers through Anthony’s hair and tries to keep his eyes open as the exquisite heat, the unbelievable press against himself, against Hannibal, engulfs him.

And Hannibal in turn presses worship against Anthony’s shoulders, down his back, head ducked to see how he and Will both penetrate him, a slow push as they move deeper and he spreads wider to accommodate them both. By his own choice, by his own design.

He is beautiful. Hannibal finds himself, for the first time in a long time, enamored.

Panting, Anthony turns his head against Will’s throat, tasting the sweat there, feeling his hammering heart. He aches, the pressure throbbing through him in the most exquisite pain.

“ _Grazie_ ,” he sighs, smile warming his face once more, cheeks flushed and lips red and eyes still closed. He rolls his shoulders back into the kisses against him with a moan, bites his lip when Will tugs his hair a little. It feels good. He feels entirely indulgent and indulged.

“This is positively Dionysian,” he sighs, pushing up to rest on his elbows, pressed chest to chest with Will, back to chest with Hannibal. He tilts his head to the side for the doctor to suck against his skin, in turn bringing his own lips to Will’s jaw to explore him in just the same way. Anthony is shaking, involuntary and blissful, and makes a weak little noise when Hannibal moves, just a little, and Will does not; the juxtaposition drives a shock of pleasure up his spine.

It is all Anthony can do to hold to Will, and let himself be held by Hannibal. He could no more resist their pull than the tides could the moon, no more resist their movement than the sand could the sea. As one rocks deeper, the other relents, again and again, so that he is never left empty, never left wanting. There is hardly space enough in the man to draw a breath, and each one caught escapes again in a shaky laugh, fingernails curving crescents into Will’s shoulders. Sweat shines across his brow, and despite his resolve, Anthony trembles, from curled toes to spread thighs, over his clenched belly and to his throat, jerking hard in a swallow.

And when Hannibal and Will time themselves to enter him together, it is Anthony whose words are stolen, evaporating into hitched gasps pitched high and keening. They do not tear into him, they are not animals; they are patient and precise, Will’s chest heaving as the pressure squeezes him so tight it nearly hurts, and Hannibal’s gaze fixed on the pliability that allows Anthony to spread so graciously. He is, as he assured them, an entirely hospitable and unselfish guest.

“You’re going to tear me apart,” Anthony laughs weakly, unable now to even force himself to kiss Will, but tilting his head towards his lips, his shoulder towards Hannibal’s kisses. They do not share his mirth, in that moment, but amusement pulls their eyes to meet all the same across Anthony’s shoulder.

In Hannibal’s eyes, a question that teases lines from the corners and lifts a brow incrementally higher.

In Will’s, an answer, as his gaze narrows and imperceptible to the poet, he shakes his head once.

He turns to press wet sloppy kisses to the corner of Anthony’s mouth instead. “Perhaps we will have mercy,” Will murmurs. “For a man who has proven he can love with more than just his words.”

Anthony laughs again, his voice pitching at the end in a helpless cry when Will shifts his hips just enough and strokes over his prostate with frightening precision.

“When one’s words are stolen,” Anthony sighs, arms shaking where they hold him up over Will, hold him up under Hannibal, who now drags his fingers over Anthony’s thighs, coaxes them to spread just a little more, so his back arches, so he takes them, if possible, deeper. “One makes do.”

“Substitution,” murmurs Hannibal. “The innate understanding of which is what differentiates chef from cook, and poet from pretender.”

Anthony exults beneath the praise that Hannibal is careful to pay not only to the obvious skill of his body, but the quickness of his mind, however languid he admits his creative process to be. That laxity does not carry, it seems, into his lovemaking, as Anthony - still glorying with his lazy feline grin - pushes his knees outward a little more, to sink further onto the two cocks inside him.

“Does he always talk so much?” he asks Will, tossing a coy look across his shoulder that lasts for only a moment before Hannibal pushes in the last inch, burying himself to the hilt. Anthony would gasp, if he could draw a breath, if his entire body wasn’t aflame and so full that he might split in half. His cock leaks copious from the pressure, beading drip by thick drip to pool clear on Will’s belly. He parts his lips when Will brings his fingers to them, and sucks the taste of wine from his fingers.

“You’ve kept his company before,” Will sighs, just as breathless, just as sweaty, savoring the closeness of the three of them, the weight of the two of them collectively pressing to his hips when he raises them and Anthony makes another helpless, high little sound. “I enjoy some dry humor with my fucking.”

A snort, from the poet, a smile from the doctor, and Will slips his hand down between his body and Anthony’s to stroke his cock, gripped tight and dripping slick. His fingers he drags softly over Anthony’s teeth, until the other bites down and Will grins. He turns his head, in turn, when Hannibal’s hand moves to cup his cheek, to caress his thumb beneath Will’s eye, and just as obediently, just as beautifully, Will’s lips part to take Hannibal’s fingers between them.

The sight of it heaves Anthony forward, spine rounding as much as he can with both men inside him, to drive into the tightly cinched tunnel of Will’s fingers. Each pulse of lips, each hollowing of scruffy cheek, the way Will’s eyes hood, the unmistakable intimacy with which he regards his husband - it pulls soft, aching sounds from the poet who watches rapt, as if the sight before him were revelation, that the path he followed was not to Hell but to Heaven.

He climaxes suddenly, voice breaking like a cry in the wilderness, _oh_ as if the word were a prayer to the two who held him in limbo and now let him ascend. Anthony bows his head, hips bucking back against the two men’s cocks pulling his ass taut, forward into Will’s firm grip. He spills with the same vibrant laugh that has already found a place between Will and Hannibal, pale ribbons cast across Will’s stomach, dripping thick onto his fingers.

“I,” Anthony breathes, shaking uncontrollably as he tries to hold himself up when the pleasure does not relent upon release but fills him still. “I have been,” he swallows, “inconsiderate…”

“Far from it,” Hannibal purrs against him, pulling his fingers free from Will’s lips and smearing his spit over them and down his chin, watching Will pant as his eyes barely remain open, as his body arches and twitches, cock squeezed harder from Anthony’s orgasm. Will can feel the imprint of every fingertip against his skin, every breath against his sweaty skin, every bite and mark left on him, when he closes his eyes. Like an x-ray.

“You are perfect,” Will tells him, arms up to press to his shoulders, to rock the poet down to him as he continues to thrust, as Hannibal does, to hold Anthony still, and close, and kiss him with breathless, bitten-red lips. The sentiment seems enough, and Will’s body convulses in pleasure next, spilling heat, overflowing it, as he keeps pushing, keeps holding, whispering things to the man that Hannibal cannot hear.

It doesn’t matter.

Those words are not for him.

But they stir the poet to life again, after his little death, they pull him into desperate kisses against Will, against Hannibal, tilting across his own shoulder to brush even the corners of their mouths together. Despite the strain, the relief, the anticipation and release, Will’s words press a crooked grin to Anthony’s mouth, as he sets his hands against Will’s chest and pushes firmly upward into Hannibal’s chest behind him.

Both men sink deeper into him, alternately, at once, it hardly matters what their bodies do when their gasps and groans fill the air to the accompaniment of skin on skin, slicked by sweat. Anthony leans back roughly into Hannibal’s chest, goosebumps spilling along his dampened skin when his coarse hair rubs against his spine and the thrusts deepen inside him. Either one of the men would be enough to fill the poet, either one would be enough to shatter his words into whimpers.

But together, oh, together Anthony won’t walk without a limp, together he won’t sit without a pointed, sharp memory up his spine of the two men who have shared themselves with him. What exists between them, he cannot fathom for the depths he has seen - he has not seen the bottom of them, and in truth he doesn’t wish to. But they share, now, in a way that he imagines they do not frequently. They fill him in firm thrusts, fucking hard inside, one after the other after the other after the other and all Anthony can do is sling his arm back around Hannibal’s neck, curl his fingers against Will’s chest, and yield the moan that they have earned from him.

The rhythm falters, Will’s fingers up against Anthony’s stomach, splaying and curling, cheeks flushed and lips parted in sated exhaustion. Hannibal presses his teeth against the poet’s shoulder and wraps an arm around his middle to hold him still, just for a moment, as he, too, loses himself into him. Into them. Into this.

Then he pulls free first.

A groan is shared between all of them, relief and pleasure and just a hint of pain from Anthony, who collapses and happily stretches, slick and messy, over Will on the table. The other wraps his arms around him, drawing languid patterns with the tips of tickling fingers over his back. He watches Hannibal, though, blue eyes fixed on his husband, and he smiles when he, too, leans nearer and Will can kiss him with a low hum of pleasure.

Anthony does not join them in this, settling instead to Will’s chest to catch his breath. He watches from so near the way that they kiss, unable to determine who is the pursuant and who the pursued, an ebb and flow that speaks volumes more than either man has to Anthony of their particular bond. Nuzzling against Will’s neck, he contents himself for the moment with the gentle clicking sounds of their mouths together, and the easing of his body back to normalcy, with sparks of pain and spasms of pleasure. Wet heat slicks down his thigh, and though Anthony knows he was unwise to be so unreasoned, it is too late now to care about anything but the steady pressure of Will’s hand up and down his spine, or the curl of Hannibal’s fingers in his hair.

Their lips part, but the kiss of their gaze does not, holding fast until Hannibal leans nearer and Will presses cheek-to-cheek with him, whispering in his ear. Anthony’s body is stuck slick and sticky to Will’s beneath, their legs a tangle, the bottle of wine long ago tipped over to no one’s particular attention. Whatever Will says is beyond Anthony’s capability to hear or care about, and he contents himself with nuzzling languid kisses into the crook of Will’s neck as Will whispers to Hannibal that he does not want to kill him.

Hannibal hums, aware enough of this already, but validates Will’s words with another slow kiss. They will not, then, and though they risk revelation, there is ready enough resolution to that should the moment come. The doctor strokes the poet’s hair, and Will’s in turn, and though Will holds his attention longer, there is an unfurling of pleasure within the doctor to consider that he has two exquisite men spread spent across his table.

It is bad form, of course, to allow thoughts of future pleasures ruin the one at hand.

He settles on the chair he had occupied at dinner, and rests his chin on folded arms, face near enough to Will’s that when he turns, their noses brush, intimate and soft. Will brings his hand up, sweaty and lazy, to draw knuckles down the sharp cheekbone of Hannibal’s face until the other turns into it with a sigh.

Anthony presses his lips to Will’s skin, over and over in sleepy pleasure, and turns to watch Hannibal as well, smile little but enough. Contentment and delight and a hint of question in it before he parts his lips to speak.

“My thanks to my most gracious, generous, and accommodating hosts,” he says, smiling wide enough to show his teeth as Hannibal smiles in turn.

“Perhaps another dinner, then,” he suggests, sits up straighter when Anthony laughs.

“Perhaps another kind of party.”

Hannibal blinks, ducks his head again, and when he looks up, Bedelia is frowning at him, jaw set in imminent displeasure that Hannibal knows will reflect, should he choose the wrong answer. He takes a breath, allowing the last lingering scents from another dinner and another table filter through his mind before turning to Anthony with a smile, apologetic.

“No,” he says. “It’s not that kind of party.”

Bedelia lifts her eyes, and lets them fall once more.

“Definitely not.”

“A shame,” the poet laughs softly, turning his head between one and the other. “You're both suddenly so fascinating.”

Hannibal can only smile, as the other returns to his dinner. He can only consider, how in another time, another different sigh of fate, he would be leaning in, now, to kiss his husband, and their new friend, one more time, before offering to bring them dessert in bed.

Another time, perhaps. Another party.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Anthony pads first to the bathroom, bare feet clicking against the tile floors. He keeps a toothbrush here now, for the weekends or odd nights that he’s invited to stay. Though Hannibal assigns their arrangement no length of time, it has been enough that they have settled into something of a triad. Anthony does not live with them, he wouldn’t tie himself to something like that, but he is a welcome guest and something of a ballast to the two adverse personalities between which he has now so often found himself, in mind and heart and body._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the wonderful [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com)!
> 
> As you all know, the Fannibal family is fighting to save our show. One of the best ways you can help is by joining other Fannibals on Twitter, and adding to the voices calling for Hannibal Season 4 to be picked up by another source. [You can find a great Intro to Twitter guide here](http://drinkbloodlikewine.tumblr.com/post/122418743225/savehannibal-twitter) and once you're all set up, feel free to add [Blood](https://twitter.com/meganistkrieg) and [Whiskey](https://twitter.com/whiskeyandspite) so you can tweet with us and let folks know what an amazing audience "Hannibal" really has!

Hannibal awakens in an empty bed.

The room is silent, but for the sounds of Florence that filter through the window. Footsteps fall across the promenade below, the sleepy murmur of voices joining with the waking songs of birds that greet the day. Hannibal seeks beside him, knowing that the body who slept alongside his but never touching is already gone.

He spreads his hand across the sheet to feel the lingering warmth, and turns to bury his nose against it, settling with eyes closed once more.

It is not the scent he seeks. This is one of wine and perfume, a sweat caused not by heat but by fear. Hannibal draws a deeper breath and pulls from memory the distant recollection of masculine aroma, an uneasy flush drawn by dreams that even Hannibal cannot chase away. He knows he cannot, ever, being so often the cause of them.

_Deeper._

He sinks, into a yielding mattress and the liquid depths of memory, and Hannibal lets himself be swallowed whole. His fingers spread across a hairless chest and skittering heartbeat. It stirs at his touch and flutters against its confines of bone and skin, and against his lips is not the silky sheen of sheets but a softly furred cheek.

Will’s mouth meets his own, clumsy and warm, and Hannibal runs his hand up across the man’s neck to frame his face and pull him closer still.

They kiss with languid weight, mouths buoyed by familiarity and strife made peaceful with time. Hannibal hums, and parts Will’s lips with his tongue to sink against him.

This is the life they were meant to have, in the place that Hannibal made for them both.

But another hand seeks across Hannibal’s chest, a slender arm wrapped across him from behind. He is held in sway by two lean bodies that curl around his own. Will lays before him, making little noises as he’s awoken into warm embrace. Behind him, the poet who with remarkable ease matches the rhythm that took them so long to discover.

A hum from him, as well, as he runs the tip of his nose against Hannibal’s spine. Will reaches forward to slide his palm warm over the back of Anthony’s hand and around to curl over his wrist in greeting before letting him go and letting his hand fold sleepily on the bed between them all.

“Mornings,” Will sighs, cursing the word with the way he turns it. Hannibal cannot help but smile, running knuckles up and down Will’s face as he frowns, fussy in his sleepiness.

“Evenings usually lead to those,” Anthony mumbles against Hannibal, shifting just enough to sit up in bed. With a groan, he stretches his shoulders back before settling into a sprawl again, high enough to see over Hannibal’s shoulder. He smiles when the doctor reaches back for his hand again, and gives it willingly, to be kissed in greeting as well.

“And you’re here,” Will yawns. He turns onto his back, hand pressing to his eyes, hair a mess. “Which means we must have had dinner.”

Anthony hums the affirmative.

"We ate out,” he confirms, and Will snorts, grin quick and genuine, pulling lines against the corners of his eyes. He drops his hand and turns to look at them both, the poet and the doctor, the two men in his life he would not exchange for the world. His smile eases to something fond, and Will directs his eyes to Hannibal.

“Coffee,” he implores, laughing when Hannibal leans in to kiss his jaw instead. “No, fuck, coffee first.”

“Where was that comma placed, Will?” 

“Go." Will's hand is against his face once more, laughing beneath and cheeks warming with it. As Hannibal moves out of bed to oblige, gently squeezing Anthony’s thigh in the process, the poet sprawls, naked and beautiful, over the bed to reach Will. He nuzzles at Will's fingers, like a dog demanding attention, before Will relents and lifts his hand just enough for Anthony to kiss him.

It’s lazy, heavy and warm as the morning sun. Will rubs their noses together when they part, humming pleased agreement when Anthony excuses himself to help with preparations, leaving Will to doze in bed alone.

Anthony pads first to the bathroom, bare feet clicking against the tile floors. He keeps a toothbrush here now, for the weekends or odd nights that he’s invited to stay. Though Hannibal assigns their arrangement no length of time, it has been enough that they have settled into something of a triad. Anthony does not live with them, he wouldn’t tie himself to something like that, but he is a welcome guest and something of a ballast to the two adverse personalities between which he has now so often found himself, in mind and heart and body.

_Deeper._

He hasn’t bothered to dress when he emerges to the kitchen, clad only in a snug black pair of boxer-briefs. A pointed stretch, arms spread wide and accompanied by a little grunt of pleasure, draws Hannibal’s eyes to him from where he has started the process of making coffee.

“Good morning.”

“Indeed it is,” agrees Anthony. He drapes his arms over Hannibal’s shoulders, pressing long against him. Taller than Hannibal by several inches, he fits flush against him, and turns his nose against the older man’s temple. “You slept well. So did he.”

“I think that he has missed the feeling of others alongside him, their weight and heat,” Hannibal says. “Before we came here, he had seven dogs.”

Anthony laughs, a single bright note, and his brows raise higher. “Seven?”

“Mmm. It was less burdensome than one might think. They listened to him, and he trained them with a patient hand.”

“What’s become of them?”

“Dispersed, for now, to several homes of friends who offered to take them in.”

“Until you return?”

Hannibal does not answer the question, and for a moment he resents the glimmer of subconscious that brings it to the surface. He begins the machine’s cheerful, burbling percolation and turns beneath the poet’s arms to lean against the counter. Anthony ducks his head into a gentle kiss, just a touch, catching Hannibal’s lower lip between his own and holding there until his smile widens enough that he can keep the kiss no longer.

“I was thinking I might work here today.”

“Will you write a line?” Hannibal teases, and Anthony’s grin brightens.

“Maybe even two, if I find myself inspired.”

He stretches taller still, and with a pleasant shiver, when Hannibal’s hands frame his waist and slide up his ribs. His presence here is warm, with a wonderful wit and intelligence that has proven as much a playground for Hannibal and Will as the poet’s body. His presence is, beyond that, a confirmation of the unexpected stability that the two men have found in their flight from the States. When Will left, when Hannibal left, as they were meant to leave, together.

_Deeper._

“How long do you plan to stay in Florence?”

“Until my wanderlust strikes again,” Anthony considers, before snorting another little laugh and nuzzling alongside Hannibal’s nose. “Or however long it takes me to milk my research stipend dry. How long do you plan to keep inviting me back?”

A hum, a deliberate non-answer. Neither know. Neither need to add a time to this thing that is so comfortable being timeless and undefined. Hannibal gently strokes his thumbs over the soft pink nipples his hands frame and Anthony grunts pleasantly in reply before pulling away to allow Hannibal his work. He moves to get the coffee mugs down for three, milk from the fridge for his own as the others drink it black.

He sets his hand flat to the counter for a moment, lip between his teeth in consideration before he turns his head to Hannibal with a smile.

"Shall I do breakfast, then?"

"Will you?"

"And try not to offend any refined palates. I will do my best," Anthony grins and pushes off again, moving to the fridge once more to consider his options. Eggs make it to the counter. Butter. From the bread basket comes the fresh white loaf from the night before, already half gone, with Will’s proclivity for chewing on it when he reads. From the spice cabinet, cinnamon and warm chai spices, brown sugar.

He lacks the grace of Hannibal in the kitchen, though he’s not so stern about it as Will. Only a single curse when he brushes the hot pan, a line between his brows as he whisks the eggs. Anthony accepts the coffee brought to him, a hint of milk kisses from his moustache as Hannibal passes by, and a shiver as his hand skims the small of the poet’s back. With a smile that quirks a little crooked, he watches the doctor carry the second mug towards the bedroom again, where Will lays with an arm outstretched for Hannibal and coffee both.

Hannibal settles beside him on the bed, coffee on the nightstand, and he leans low to sweep a lingering kiss across Will’s lips. The sound of cooking carries in softly from the kitchen, but there is no sensation of invasiveness in having the other’s presence there with them. The adoration shared between Hannibal and Will runs deeper than that, than for anyone or anything else, a bedrock that cannot be destabilized.

Not anymore.

_Deeper._

Will laughs, when he tries to reach past Hannibal for the mug but finds his attempt blocked by a little lean. He tries the other way, his wrist snared and palm brought to Hannibal’s mouth instead. Dark eyes glitter amusement and Will’s cheeks warm as he settles back to simply watch him instead.

“You surprise me,” Will murmurs. “Constantly, but this -”

“Him.”

“Letting him cook in your kitchen,” Will amends with a grin.

"I left so I wouldn't see."

"Liar." Will takes a deep breath and holds it, releasing it with a soft groan and a stretch, arching up off the bed and laughing when Hannibal moves to lay over him, to press him down with a comfortable weight and nuzzle him affectionately. Will cards his fingers through Hannibal’s hair to settle it into a comfortable mess.

"You're going out later.” It isn’t a question, more an instinct now, for knowing when Hannibal has to go and how long for. There is no longer a worry he won't return, he always does.

"Unfortunately."

"That means he's making dinner too."

"Or you could."

"Banish the thought," Will snorts. "You refuse to eat my cooking."

"Because I happen to enjoy tasting my food."

“A little bit of spice never hurt anyone.”

“However, several whole chili peppers do,” Hannibal says. He allows a smile, soft, tilting his head against the familiar fingers that curl through his hair. He will have to leave them, for a time, when he begins his day at the Palazzo Capponi, and though the work is stirring, Hannibal knows that his thoughts will return often to here and now.

And so he lingers, reveling in the easy rise and fall of Will’s chest beneath his own, the scent of mingled sweat and aftershave, detestable but familiar. With an arm free, Will squirms upward enough that he can take up his mug and steal a sip, arm looped around Hannibal’s neck as the older man takes his time to savor Will’s throat beneath his mouth. When a shadow falls across them, neither move from where they lay, nor does Anthony come nearer than the doorway.

“I see how it is,” he sighs, put-upon. “Leave the cooking to me so you two can play. Unfair, really. I might have to eat it all myself in consolation.”

Will turns his head to look, smiling when he sees the other leaning so casually in their doorway, legs crossed at the ankle, arms around his middle. There are bags under his eyes but not horrific ones. After the weekend they will have faded, as Anthony does from their lives. For several days or several weeks, it all tends to depend on their workload - whoever has the most.

"Might be a safe idea," Will remarks, shifting beneath Hannibal to lay on his stomach instead. "I'm making dinner, apparently."

"Are you really?" The poet grins. "Oof. Perhaps I might enjoy the breakfast then, while I have my tastebuds intact."

"Fuck you both."

Anthony merely curls the corners of his lips higher, in lieu of saying anything. He watches Hannibal nuzzle against his husband’s hair as Will reaches for the coffee mug again, careful not to spill any. He marvels some days at the fact that he has been allowed this, to share in something so intimate - and it has been intimate between the three of them - without a demand for commitment or clarification.

"Will you come downstairs?" he asks finally.

Will snorts, but only gently, with no derision sharpening the sound. “Are you lonely already?”

“Constantly,” Anthony sighs. “The pains of being an only child, I’m afraid.”

“But you live alone,” responds Hannibal, turning his cheek against Will’s back to watch the poet. “You travel alone. Surely you do not want for company, charming as you are.”

“Don’t flatter me until you’ve tried the french toast, your skillet is nightmarish,” he answers, before shrugging up a shoulder. “What good is company if one never gives themselves space to appreciate it? It becomes a burden, then, rather than a pleasant surprise.”

He watches as Will begins to stir and Hannibal presses him back down with a kiss against his shoulder blade. Will squirms and buries a laugh into the pillow, and for a moment, Anthony’s brows draw in. Just an instant of envy, but gone almost in the same instant it appears, and replaced instead by a genuine smile as he snares up his pants from the floor, changes his mind, and turns toward the kitchen again without them.

“Don’t exhaust yourselves without me,” he calls back. “I’m still here for another day.”

"I like him," Will mumbles into the pillow, accepting Hannibal's hum against him in agreement. They don't move for a long time, content to press together and doze, Hannibal's lips running dry and warm over smooth skin growing more tanned in the Italian sun. Will stretches out his arm and curls his fingers with Hannibal's when predictably he slips his hand atop.

Running his thumb over and over the rough knuckles, Will hums, watches the door, and after a moment more, starts to extricate himself to get up. He kisses Hannibal chastely on the lips and smiles when he says he'll take a shower. Will waits for the water to run before pushing himself up on all fours and arching his back in a stretch. He finds a shirt - first one he can - and slips it over his shoulders, making his way down the stairs with his coffee.

_Deeper._

"Finally." Anthony sets another piece of French toast between his teeth and grins before chewing. Will gives him a look, far too fond and pleased to be genuinely angry, and moves to refill his coffee.

"Figured you'd fallen asleep again."

"Almost."

"Clearly," the poet smiles. "You've got my shirt on."

Will brow arches and he cocks his hip against the counter. "What of it?"

"Well, I certainly am not complaining. It drapes beautifully against your ass."

Will snorts, leans over to take the man’s fork and snare a piece of the toast. Just sweet enough, warm with spices and flavor. He hums, pleased, and moves to get some for himself.

He doesn't make it more than a step before Anthony snares his wrist and reels him back in. With amusement narrowing his eyes, he kisses across Will's fingertips, his palm when his fingers splay, higher to Will's wrist and the soft cotton against the crook of his elbow and beneath his jaw when Will bends to acquiesce.

"We'll make a morning person out of you in no time," Anthony promises, cradling Will's cheek in his hand and sucking soft kisses beneath his jaw. The older man makes a sound of disbelief, but tilts towards the poet's warm mouth, smile curving wider despite himself.

"No one's succeeded in that yet," he says, pulling away to continue seeking out food. Their fingers trail together and Anthony watches him a moment more before returning to his own plate.

"Then I'll at least make sure you enjoy the attempts."

"That's much more likely."

He spears a few slices onto a plate, but doesn't make it back to his seat before he's caught again. Tugged closer by his shirt tail - Anthony's shirt tail, rather - Will drops with a huff of laughter into the poet's lap, held with an arm around his waist and a hand spread across his belly, teasing bare beneath the newly-shared shirt.

Will adjusts until he sits comfortably, and starts on his breakfast. Behind him, Anthony just rests, content to pick at his food having eaten the bulk of it before Will had come downstairs. His fingers skim absently over and over the smooth and toned stomach in front of him, his chin rests against Will’s shoulder. Neither speak because neither need to, their bodies say enough, with gentle shifts back, touches tickling and playful and soft and gentle.

Will finishes his coffee and leans back against the poet fully, head back against his shoulder, hand up over Anthony’s against his stomach.

"You tamed the skillet."

"I made a good go of it."

Will smiles and with a sigh turns to nuzzle Anthony's neck before gently kissing him, just once.

"Will you write today?"

"I might."

"You should."

Anthony makes a little sound, as if chastened, letting his eyes slip closed as Will breathes warmth against his neck. "If only it were so easy."

"The long-suffering artist trope is a bit overdone, isn't it?"

"Never," gasps Anthony. "It is _timeless_. I'll stop playing it up when it stops working so well. And at least I'm not starving, though that might change come dinner."

"Christ, if you two dislike it so much, why don't you make it?"

"Then we wouldn't have anything to tease you about."

"There's plenty," Will assures him, meeting Anthony's lips when he tilts his head and they touch into a kiss, both smiling, both pleased.

"You might get better at it."

"You might actually finish a poem."

Anthony's laugh is loud and genuine. He squeezes Will's belly and skims his hand higher, stroking taut skin and brushing across a nipple, an intentional accident. Will turns a little more, to better allow Anthony to kiss him, their tongues still sweet with spice and warmed by coffee. It is only when Hannibal enters with a hum that they draw apart, and rest their foreheads together instead.

"Your husband is a slave-driver," Anthony complains, dark eyes darting to Hannibal. "Both of you, really. No appreciation whatsoever for the creative process."

Hannibal is already dressed, though not quite enough to yet be leaving the house. He lifts an eyebrow and regards the two of them before making to get some breakfast himself, still warm, kept so by a once-impeccably white towel.

"There is a reason, I suppose, that neither of us are artists."

"You compose music," Will reminds him, leaning past Anthony and at once more into him, one elbow against the table. Hannibal hums, licks the side of his thumb clean of aromatic butter and gives Will a fond look.

"And you make lures."

"Do you?" Anthony looks delighted.

"That's not artistic."

"I beg to differ."

"They are practical," Will says, smiling. "For the catching of fish."

"As music and poetry are practical for capturing the soul and imagination," Anthony counters. Hannibal just gives him a very pleased look before taking up his cutlery. "Art is art, Will, no matter how hard you try to mask it."

A quiet snort, and Will turns his face against Anthony’s chest again, before pushing himself to stand, taking their plates in one hand and stroking his other through Hannibal’s hair, upsetting it again.

"Perhaps to answer your earlier question," Hannibal adds suddenly, “we shall invite you one time for every line you pen, of your work."

The sound Anthony makes is one of quiet agony, struck by the blow of the doctor’s words. He grasps a hand against his heart and slumps, wounded, into his seat, head tilted back to watch them both upside down.

“Then I’ll bid you farewell now, and thank you for your hospitality.”

“A lover but not a fighter,” Will remarks, before squeezing up against Hannibal to pour another cup of coffee.

Anthony sighs. Considering his options, his eyes narrow mischievously.

“One line for an invitation back,” he confirms, meeting Hannibal’s glance as the doctor raises his brows.

“Do you agree to it?”

“On those terms, yes,” Anthony grins, teeth flashing broad and white even as he tries to smooth his expression by rubbing a hand across his mustache and the scruff of his beard. “You didn’t say it had to be good poetry. I just won’t sign my name to it. ‘There once was a young man from Brighton’,” he begins, before pushing to stand with a laugh.

“Is that what they teach you at Cambridge?” Will asks, failing to suppress a grin as Hannibal sighs in mild dismay.

“Among other things,” he agrees. “We all do two courses, really - one above the table, and one below.”

“I think I’m reconsidering my stance on British education,” Will says, sipping his coffee with a smile that translates to soft lines at the corners of his eyes.

“Perhaps we have merely been lucky enough to encounter a student who excelled in the latter,” Hannibal offers, finally allowing a smile himself, unable to resist with the charming grin that meets him. And he is charming. Devilishly charming. 

“Tables and dark corners and dusty library shelves,” Anthony lists, amused, and Will licks the coffee from his top lip before setting the cup down to the counter.

“I think I’d like to go to Cambridge.”

“We don’t have enough dark corners and tables?” Hannibal asks him, head tilted and smile fond, as Will just raises his eyebrows.

“You dust the shelves in the library,” he points out, to Anthony’s delight. Will leans in to kiss Hannibal softly again, a gentling, perhaps, of a morning teasing, and moves past him, past Anthony, and makes his way back up the stairs again to take his turn in the shower, though there are three in the house that could all be used at once, should any of them be so inclined.

None are.

_Deeper._

Anthony tilts his head to watch Will ascend the stairs, strong legs in short boxers that peek through the long shirttails he still wears.

“Do you think he’ll spill coffee on me if I were to join him in the shower?” He asks.

With consideration, Hannibal tilts his head, and purses his lips together. “If he did, it would be his fault, in truth, for bringing coffee into the shower.”

“And myself burned.”

“We all take risks from time to time.”

“And to the victor go the spoils,” Anthony decides, turning to rest his hands against Hannibal’s chest, fingernails snagging the soft fabric as he leans in to touch their lips together. “Or a scalded groin. You’ll kiss it better though, won’t you?”

Hannibal sighs against the poet’s mouth before nodding towards the stairs, allowance and encouragement both. “Clearly your course at Cambridge didn’t include studies in medicine.”

Anthony offers only a rakish grin in response before pivoting towards the stairs. He makes sure to walk slowly, calculated stretches of long legs, hips shifting just enough that Hannibal can’t help but watch the way his shorts ride tight and high beneath his ass. Once the poet’s point is made, he takes the stairs two at a time, and has barely cleared the doorway before he’s shed his last little remainder of clothing to the floor.

The shower is running already, a more practical option than the ornate bathtub in the guest room. Steam billows across the mirrors despite the burgeoning heat of the summer day, and Anthony pauses only to glance at himself in the mirror with approval. They both had him last night, one after the next, fucking him into ragged exhaustion and shameless collapse between the two men who have been such gracious hosts. He spans his fingers along his throat where suckled bruises bloom pale, remembering which were Hannibal’s - always darker, with the broken lines of teeth pressed within - and which were Will’s, always in curious places along his collarbones or the hollow of his throat.

“You’re taking too long,” he declares, grinning when Will startles out a curse in surprise. “Other people need to use the shower too, you know.”

“Good,” Will says, drawing a hand through his dripping hair to move it from his face. “I’ll take longer now, just for spite.”

“Fantastic,” Anthony grins, stepping closer and waiting for Will to relent with a snort before joining him under the spray. “I hadn’t planned to wait anyway.”

“Rude.”

“Charming.”

Will doesn’t argue, turning under the water to turn to face the man instead, arching his neck to look at him. He hates and loves, both, how much taller Anthony is than him. He adores being able to bring him to his knees, easy and smiling, always. He loves being pinned against the front door when he welcomes him in after days or weeks apart. He hates the teasing.

It’s a lie, but it’s easier to lie with coffee in his system.

“Needy,” Will teases. “Shouldn’t you be writing pages of dirty limericks to make up for the nights spent being fucked already?”

“I wasn’t aware I had a backlog.”

“For the sex you’ve had? Plenty.”

“Then consider me in your debt,” Anthony murmurs, stepping closer as Will takes a step back to tease. Another, until Will’s back presses to the tile and Anthony presses against Will’s body. He ducks his head and avoids Will’s mouth, teasing a kiss to the corner of his lips, another over his cheek. Up to Will’s temple and into his hair, wet curls sticking to his face, breath as warm as the steam-thick air.

Will sets his hands against Anthony’s chest as if to push him away, but the poet grasps his wrists to bring Will’s arms up around his neck instead, bending a little to compensate for the height difference and feel their groins slide slick together.

“You know,” he says, teasing a shiver from Will when his lips brush his ear, “if you want me to talk dirty to you, I don’t need a limerick for it.”

Will laughs, a shiver of breath between them, already contented to have a lazy day near this man as Hannibal goes about his own at the Palazzo. It is never a burden to share his space, he never takes a toll on Will’s energy or tolerance for company. Much like Hannibal himself. Rare indeed. And comfortable, when he is here.

“Go on then,” Will teases back, drawing his fingers into the poet’s wet hair as well, tugging softly, scraping lightly against the back of his neck with gentle nails.

Anthony grins, and catches Will’s earlobe lightly between his teeth, tugging it between his lips to suck. He only relents when Will’s moan becomes desperate and his knees start to buckle, helpless.

“A sudden appreciation for the arts after all,” Anthony murmurs. He slides himself slick against Will’s body, hips turning inward, their cocks touching together - still soft, but already stiffening. “Should I tell you how sore I am today? How you and your husband fucked me so hard last night that it’s a wonder I can walk today? I still feel the thickness of your cock and his in me, my muscles pull when when I sit. I wonder how it felt for you, to feel my ass already fucked open by your husband. How slick it must have been to use his come as your lubricant.”

“Christ,” Will whispers, jutting his hips up only to find himself shoved back by the steady grind of Anthony’s own. The poet kisses a path beneath Will’s jaw, over his chin, around to his other ear, and lifts his hands to brace himself against the wall and pin Will in place.

“None of that here,” smirks Anthony. “Not when I need so desperately to tell you that since the moment I saw you in my shirt, I have thought of nothing more than wanting to turn you over and put my cock in you. Obscene, the way it hung around your thighs, the bare and very deliberate glimpses of your thighs beneath. Your shorts. Your ass,” he adds, holding out the sibilant until a laugh breaks free. “You’re lucky I didn’t bend you over the kitchen table. Your coffee would have grown cold in the amount of time I spent watching my cock disappear inside you.”

“Fuck,” Will laughs, hard again from the morning, body shivering despite the hot water with every slip of his body against Anthony’s. Damn his charm. Damn his poetry. A poet shouldn’t speak as filthily as he does, and yet Will finds himself aching for more of the depravity to be poured over his skin, sucked into his chest, pushed into him.

“You would’ve had me like a fucking animal,” Will murmurs, eyes open and up, hands slipping from around Anthony’s shoulders and under his arms to hold him closer, tighter, bending him a little more to watch his shoulders curve and his legs brace against the slippery tile. “Making up for how I hand your knees around your ears the night before? Oh, poet, the sounds you made.”

“You make music in me,” laughs Anthony, but it’s no longer the bright and sunny thing it usually is. Now his voice shifts lower, a little rougher, to meet the coarseness of his words. He curls his spine, rolling their hips together, their cocks stiff and slippery until Anthony reaches between to grab them both together. Will’s voice splits weak against his shoulder, despite his attempts to restrain it.

“I think you like it rough,” the poet muses. “Your husband likes to give it that way, all strength and firm hands. You would’ve complained when I doubled you over the breakfast table, fussed and muttered against the wood. And when I held your hair like this,” he says, slicking his free hand off the wall to fist Will’s curls, “you’d have bent your back and spread your legs in a heartbeat. Like a fucking animal,” he echoes, grinning against Will’s ear. “Show me.”

Will curses again, turns his head into the grip and grits his teeth in pleasure when Anthony pulls it just a little tighter. Will does love it. He supposes that’s easy enough to read from him when he and Hannibal occasionally go at each other like beasts before calming down to panting and soft touches.

Obediently, he sets his feet wider, pushes up on his toes to feel the poet’s hand harder around his cock, groaning when he doesn’t give that to him. Will breathes out slowly, eyes up to the bright drops falling from the showerhead. It’s hypnotic, it’s metronomic and wonderful and he is so aroused he can barely breathe.

When he slips his eyes back to Anthony’s they’re wider, dark with pupil and hungry.

Strange light infuses the scene in scarlet and gold - the bathroom lights, it must be, not the sun rising higher into the sky. Their skin shines as a savage kiss joins both men, glistening slick with water and not the later-morning sun of Florence but the ember-wired bulbs of their own shared space.

_Deeper._

Anthony ducks and snares Will around his thighs. He is not as strong as Hannibal, not as fierce, but his passion is intoxicating. Lifting Will from his feet and bracing him back against the wall, he moans delight against Will’s reddened lips. Anthony does nothing in half-measures, not the dedication to single lines of poetry, not the expanse of his intelligence, not the ferocious and fiery love that he gives to both men without question or need to question.

His lovemaking cannot help but mirror his youthful enthusiasm.

He slips an arm around Will’s back and hitches him higher when Will tightens his legs around the poet’s narrow hips. They kiss viciously, biting lips and sucking tongues, consuming each other and allowing themselves to be consumed. Slipping his other hand beneath Will’s ass, Anthony rubs against his opening. No teasing now, no coy playfulness - though his crooked grin is all but permanent but for when another plunging kiss sinks against his mouth and draws it away.

Will groans, the sound deep enough to almost be a growl as he spreads his legs more, presses down against the hand seeking to breach him. He kisses hard enough to make his lips numb, parts them only to breathe before snaring Anthony close again. He makes a high, weak sound of pleasure when his hair is yanked again to break their kiss for longer than a moment.

He runs fingernails down the expanse of the writer’s back, snares up over his shoulders, down his arms. Will is all motion, hungry energy and need between them. He wants to be fucked as much as Anthony wants to fuck him.

“Are you going to tear me to shreds?”

“I might.” Will’s grin is sharp, predatory, before he eases a little, chastisement quietly taken. Perhaps another time, he will draw blood, perhaps another time he will allow his own to be drawn. Later. They have worked on intimacy already, initial meetings still a little stilted with figuring out who wanted what and and in what capacity.

Now it’s easy, now it’s a breath and a touch and the rest goes as it should.

So will this, in time.

The fight dies out between them, but the fire still burns hot. Anthony’s kiss holds Will’s mouth smothered beneath his own, their noses bumping, breath quick against the other’s cheek as they twist their lips together and bring their bodies into mirror unison. He presses in, finger damp but not so much as to prevent the twinge of pain that curls Will’s legs tighter around his hips. He squeezes harder, and watches as a laugh breaks their kiss and Anthony narrows his eyes at him, giving Will what he demands with his body, giving him his finger to the knuckle, his second beside it, third teasing, cock hard, everything.

There is nothing they have asked of Anthony that he has shied from, nothing they have offered that has been met with less than a wry grin and naughty delight. Just as much as his willingness has eased the way, so too have their considerations for him - they have not let themselves unleash upon him as they do each other, in dire moments relieving old wounds and wounds that never were and kissing them whole again. They have been considerate.

Gracious.

Hospitable.

_Deeper._

Will shoves his shoulders back against the tile wall with a snarl curled across clenched teeth. He rocks himself hard to take Anthony’s fingers as deep as he can. The poet spreads them, kissing the tremors from Will’s throat as he shakes with the wonderful strain of it. On the fine line between not-enough and just-enough, Anthony withdraws his fingers and hisses, grinning when Will sucks rough against his jaw in retribution.

“You don’t want to get fucked,” Anthony murmurs, a throaty purr. “You _need_ to get fucked. You need my cock so far inside you that there’s no room to even bloody breathe. You’re going to be sore for days after this,” he warns, reaching beneath Will to line up against his entrance. “Ask me sweetly,” comes the tease, almost prim with the crisp frame of his accent around it.

Will whines, a needy, demanding thing, and watches Anthony with a smile, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. He eases his hands where they had gripped against him, drawing marks over his chest and stomach, and instead, eases them up his throat and over his jaw, slipping through the wet hair of his beard and up to cup his cheeks. With breath shuddering and chest heaving, Will leans in slowly to draw his nose gently alongside Anthony’s, lips parted before he bites the bottom one.

They are on the edge of this, both trembling as water hisses around them, fills the bathroom, the bedroom with steam. Neither care - Anthony patient enough to wait for his teasing demands to be met, Will good enough at the game himself to know how to play it. He nuzzles again, and with a soft moan arches his back to push himself higher up Anthony’s body so he can whisper into his ear.

“Please fuck me,” he breathes. “Long enough for me to ache, hard enough for me to forget my own name.” Will shivers as the poet does, sighing warmly against his cheek before nosing behind his ear again. “I need you to fuck me."

“Goddamn right you do,” laughs Anthony, as he pushes Will into the wall and penetrates deep. Will clenches on instinct at the sharp stab up his spine, but the groan he presses into Anthony’s shoulder loosens his body again just as quickly. He loosens his thighs enough to slip downward, taking more, faster, every inch of cock that Anthony gives him. His feet skid against the slick tile and he shoves Will tighter against the wall to hold him in place until he’s buried down to the coarse curls of hair around his cock and Will is shaking with the sudden strain of it.

“You are wonderful,” Anthony mutters, eyes drifting blissfully closed. He keeps one hand against the wall, his other arm around Will’s waist, and bucks upward to unsettle another sound from the older man, again to hear him hiss and then sigh. “I adore you both,” he sighs harsh against Will’s throat. “Utterly. Hopelessly.”

His throat clicks on a swallow, and with a shaky breath of laughter, he adds:

“And _God_ do I ever love to fuck you.”

Will laughs, the sound warm, vibrating, and then allows even that to be taken from him with a sharp thrust. He clings on, as much for balance and support as the desperate need and desire to. He loves feeling Anthony against him, he loves feeling him inside him, around him, hot and panting and grinning, always grinning. Whatever they have, whatever it means, it is enough for them, all three of them.

Will moans and presses his teeth against Anthony’s shoulder as he rocks faster, forcing Will to arch his back, again and again, coiling himself, sliding against the slick shower wall as he’s fucked against it. He is wanton and shameless and entirely content to remain that way, manhandled and controlled, hair pulled and breath stolen, over and over.

_Deeper._

“Fuck.”

Will doesn’t know anymore if his hair is slicked down by water or sweat, he doesn’t know if the mess between them is his own precome or sweat, and none of it matters. Nothing matters at all but the sharp thrusts into him, the whispered words of adoration and filthy secrets. Nothing matters because nothing exists outside of this moment, here, between them.

“Harder.”

“God, you’re hungry for it.”

“Starving.” Will grasps against a stubbled jaw and yanks Anthony closer again, devouring him, panting hot spurts of air against his cheek, feeding him moans and whimpers and pleas as his brows rise, press together.

They are a cacophony, graceless and wild and youthful in their eagerness, in the clumsy steps Anthony takes to stay upright, in the firm fast fuck against the wall. Laughter and a battery of kisses, warm hands and relentless thrusts. It is joyous. It is naughty. Anthony delights as much in the thought that he’s fucking another man’s husband as he does in the knowledge that he’ll be fucked just as soundly by that man later - as he does in knowing that they will, at the end of the day, collapse together into sleepy kisses shared three ways.

He digs his fingernails into Will’s ass, struggling to keep him supported, forcing himself faster, further inside. Red marks dig across Will’s plush skin, and Anthony swallows his gasp into a moaning kiss, as the poet breaks hot and spilling inside the older man. His heart staggers. He shivers.

And his laugh, when it frees itself again, is nearly a sob, euphoric.

Anthony lets go of the wall to hold Will balanced on his waist just as he is, supported by nothing but the poet’s own lean strength. He instead grasps Will’s cock, tilting his head beneath the volley of kisses, so dizzy that he has to close his eyes to keep the floor from falling out beneath him.

Will slows his own erratic thrusting, pressing forehead to forehead with Anthony, hand laced through his hair as he parts his lips and shares his air, lets himself be touched and stroked and brought closer and closer to his own blissful release. It is close, and intimate, and both of them exhausted, now, by their play, contented to let this be ridden out at its own pace.

Will twists, just enough, hisses when Anthony moves within him, still, and presses his fingers harder to the man’s scalp before allowing himself to come with a moan, the sound reverberating around the bathroom as though it were a cathedral, vast and ancient and holy.

Perhaps it is.

Anthony’s greatest asset is his words, whether carefully plotted over months or spoken freely. And when Will finishes, in particular, he pours them out from parted lips and open heart. Coaxing words, gentle words, adoring words as his hand echoes the affection with milking strokes to feel every bead slick down his fingers. He murmurs, still, as he sets Will to the wall again and buries his face against his neck, laughing, sighing as he flicks Will’s mess to the ground and embraces him properly. Will lifts his arms around Anthony’s shoulders, and both catch their breath beneath the spray.

“You’d have fit right in at Oxford.”

_No._

“You’d have fit right in at Cambridge.”

Will grins, sleepy and relaxed, fussing only when Anthony lets him place his feet to the ground once more. He drags an arm across his eyes and accepts the kisses that the poet touches to his flushed skin, turning his head upward towards the light that casts sun across their bodies. They are alive and whole, and the brightness of them both is blinding as their eyes meet, and their laughter rises again.

_Rise._

Hannibal closes his hand into a fist, the cool sheet caught within.

_Rise._

He stretches long, splaying his limbs to feel them occupy the bed entirely.

_Rise._

He blinks his eyes open, finally, and watches dust move through the sunlight that seeks to fill the empty spaces.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hannibal lifts Anthony’s scarf against his eyes, and with precise and careful movements, knots it securely behind his head. “Perhaps then the greater punishment would be to leave you bereft of any sensation at all.”_
> 
> _“Only possible if I’m dead, I’m afraid.”_
> 
> _“A shame,” Hannibal responds, amused. “Though were I to utilize these correctly -”_
> 
> _“Heartless,” sighs Anthony, forever put-upon. “You would miss me too much.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) without whom we would be adrift in a sea of misspellings and comma splices.

It’s late.

It doesn’t matter what time because time is hardly meaningful in a place where all it does is pass. Slowly, cripplingly so, without incident or interest to the man it swills around. Hannibal brings his glass to his lips, but as before, with a sigh, he lets it come to rest against his stomach instead, undrunk.

A bath is running. Hannibal considers, again, the ease with which a simple drowning could happen, how it would release him from stresses outside of his control. Simple. Easy. Effective.

Ineffective.

He paces to one of the elaborate couches, embroidered and silken, dark red to emulate an Oriental style, though the furniture is clearly Italian made. There is a book there already, one he had left open to its page when last he had sat here, pondering similarly useless possibilities in his life. Now, he sets the glass to the darkwood table beside it, and lowers himself comfortably to sit, taking the book up again.

He had not read far, and even now, he finds the words blurring before he can take them in. He brings a hand to his eyes and rubs, deliberate and slow, enough to see stars sparking behind closed lids.

“Is there any language you _don’t_ read?”

Anthony’s voice is lowered, appropriately for the late hour, and when Hannibal looks up, he’s standing in the doorway, barefoot in just his slacks and untucked shirt, a wine glass in his hand.

“If I did not know a language, I could not read it,” Hannibal suggests. He lifts his chin, a gentle challenge, and at that angle can more readily suppress the smile he can feel tug short the muscles beneath his eyes. “So yes, to answer your fallacy. Those that I do not know, I do not read.”

“Nonsense.”

Hannibal lifts a brow at the brash retort, and finally allows his smile to appear as his challenger approaches.

“Depending on one’s education and the tongues they already know, there are plenty of dialects and whole languages that one might piece together from that existing knowledge,” he explains, and when Hannibal finally slips his finger from inside his book to let it close, Anthony slinks down beside him. “Am I disrupting you?”

“Just derailing a train of thought,” Hannibal offers instead, but he is hardly angry. Anthony is always welcome company, especially on nights Will is out - seeking whatever it is he seeks in the city. Clarity, perhaps, closure, new building blocks for a history for them to start crafting from.

“Was it going far?” Anthony asks, smiling around the rim of his glass as he brings it to his lips and takes a deliberate, slow sip.

“Hard to say.”

The poet grins and sets the glass to the couch as he shifts a knee up against it, curling his toes behind his other leg comfortably folded. He is the epitome of ease, and in truth he has no reason not to be. He had spent most of the day working on his poetry, perhaps diligently, perhaps genuinely inspired, feet up against the balcony railing and swinging back on his chair. He had accepted kisses and soft words when either Will or Hannibal had come by, but beyond greeting them in the morning, this is the first interaction he has had with them.

“Are you earning your place in our bed?” Hannibal asks him instead, finds the smile turning just enough to be mischievous, as Anthony holds up three fingers to show his progress.

“With the utmost diligence and care,” Anthony assures him. When he lowers his hand again, he lets his fingers fall upon Hannibal’s arm, thumb stroking the inside of his elbow. “Would you like to hear a line?”

The doctor inclines his head, appreciative, and his smile bolsters. “Please.”

Drawing his shoulders up straight, Anthony draws a breath. He holds himself at attention, practiced and poised, and clears his throat.

“‘There was a young lady of Worcester’,” he begins, and Hannibal cuts him short with a hum as his eyes close, feigning suffering.

“Perhaps I will wait until it is complete.”

“That’s the best part,” Anthony grins, setting his teeth against his glass. “Shall I spoil it for you? It involves sandpaper in a very sensitive area.”

“You are terrible.”

“You know,” Anthony shifts to sit even closer, resting one elbow against the back of the couch, fingers curled beneath his cheek. “I tend to forget, until I’m reminded. I’ve always considered my work to be -”

“- overwrought?”

Anthony feigns hurt with a huff.

“Allegorical,” he amends, pressing his knuckles to his cheek a little harder before he grins again, eyes narrowed and bright behind his glasses. They look so much like Will’s. “Am I really so terrible?” he asks, coy, tempting. “Will you tell me just how terrible?”

Hannibal considers the ceiling for a moment, arching high overhead and patterned in ornate images of the heavens.

“In Paris, you introduced me to a metaphor I’ve yet to prove capable of making myself forget,” Hannibal responds. “Something relating to squatting one’s self over a keyboard and -”

“Depositing a fresh one,” Anthony finishes for him, thrilled as a schoolboy at the dire amusement in Hannibal’s gaze. “Yes, I do remember, and I’m pleased that my words could have such a lasting effect for you.”

“In psychiatric circles, that might be referred to as ‘projection’.”

“ _Heresy_ ,” whispers Anthony, before a laugh breaks loud again and he watches Hannibal above the tops of his glasses. “Leave the work be, I torment it enough already on my own. Tell _me_ how terrible _I_ am.”

“Enough,” Hannibal laughs in answer, bringing his own wine to his lips now, having reached for it, followed by dark hooded eyes.

“Enough? Is that all that I’ve earned, _enough_?”

“Quite.”

Hannibal’s smile softens his eyes and lifts his lips both, and Anthony bites his lip watching him. He knows, now, how dangerous those real smiles are, the ones that take over Hannibal’s face and allow his lips to lift just enough to show his teeth, sharp and uneven and entirely suited to him. The poet hums, sucks his lip a moment more before releasing it and finishing his wine in one long drink, tilting his head back to show his throat, eyes narrow as he watches Hannibal from this position.

“Would it be quite terrible,” he asks, leaning, a deep bend, over Hannibal’s lap to set his empty glass to the table. “Terrible enough,” Anthony amends, eyes up before he allows himself to sit back again. “If I were to continue derailing your trains of thought all evening?”

He isn’t allowed to sit back entirely, before Hannibal’s knuckles press to his cheek and hold him still with only a touch. Pressing his tongue to his incisor, Anthony’s eyes narrow, and he follows the effortless pull of Hannibal’s touch closer.

“It would be a tragedy,” Hannibal says. “So many innocent thoughts waylaid from ever reaching their destinations. Lost, forever, having intended no wrongdoing but to proceed to their natural conclusions. Like a church roof, suddenly collapsing in the middle of a mass.”

“Terrible indeed,” whispers Anthony.

“And a greater crime still to think that the one who caused it would go unpunished.”

“God?”

“Every writer imagines themselves to be,” Hannibal considers, amused, gaze following the sudden grin that appears in return. “What’s to be done about all that potential, smashed to pieces because of a preening poet’s pride?”

Anthony’s smile draws so wide that his glasses lift, and he tilts his head in a feline rub against Hannibal’s fingers, guiding them up to his hair, streaked through with patches of pale grey.

“You could spank me,” he suggests, before snorting a brash laugh.

“Would it do any good to a masochist?” Hannibal asks, moving his crossed leg down to rest both his feet flat on the floor, lowering Anthony into a deeper bend in the process, fingers still pressing just gently against a stubbled cheek.

“Am I one?” comes the curious question, the smile no less bright.

“Most assuredly,” Hannibal nods, tilting his head to regard the long, pleasant curve of Anthony’s body resting against his own. He knows him, now, intimately. Knows most of the places that bring about a pleased squirm or a breathless gasp, though it has been Will to find most of them. “There is no creative person on earth who is not without some streak of masochism within them. Endless rejections, endless questioning of their choices in their professional field. Criticism, hatred, misunderstanding, displeasure. You thrive on it.”

The poet damn near purrs and slides a little deeper into Hannibal’s lap, nuzzling his crotch, grinning against his thigh.

“So what would-” Hannibal’s hand slaps sharp, unexpected, against the elegant curve of Anthony’s ass. “-a mere spanking do?”

A shiver ripples up Anthony’s spine, down his legs, curls his toes and stretches his shoulders before he allows a moan. Languid, he twists his hips upward to beckon, downward to rub, and tucks another laugh against Hannibal’s leg before tilting his head up to watch him.

“Pluck from me even sweeter notes than those of your harpsichord,” he offers. Another swift spank is his reward, and indeed, with clenched fists and a tug of his body against the couch, Anthony’s voice pours out heady as wine. “Not the point I suppose.”

“Masochism is only part of the equation,” Hannibal suggests. “It is one part of many, and so what then encapsulates the greater whole?”

It brings to mind Anthony’s higher education, endless hours in tutelage both enlightening and infuriating. But he listens, expression drawn narrow in thought, with all the attention a driven student might have.

He was, once, a very talented student.

He might have continued to be.

“Experience,” Anthony decides. His entire expression alights, his body draws upward in a sudden surge of energy, and he laughs as Hannibal presses him back down by the small of his back. “Experience, a desire to know all that I might made manifest by _doing_. To feel pleasure, pain, plain foods, exceptional ones, bad lovers and good, terrible liquor and fine wines, to suffer the agony of words that refuse to be written and the exultation when they funnel through me and flood the page.”

He draws a breath and bites his lip, and Hannibal blinks Will away to meet the poet’s triumph.

“You are a libertine,” suggests Hannibal, and Anthony laughs, squirming the length of his tall, skinny body against the couch and Hannibal’s lap.

“Entirely.”

“And so, knowing the spirit that moves you -”

“Punishment, still?”

“We’ve yet to stop derailing trains.”

Anthony lifts his feet, almost childish in the gesture, and swings them in a slow arc up and down, up and down.

“Were you to, somehow, withdraw the capability of what one presumes a full experience to be -”

“Somehow.”

“Somehow. With a blindfold.”

“Mmm.”

“Restraints.”

“Mmmm.” 

Anthony’s lips curve up and he presses his tongue just beneath his top lip again, a slow slide from one sharp incisor to the other, before he gently clicks it and closes his mouth again. “Would that not render my masochism vulnerable to exploitation? The other parts of my complex equation just the same, if all I can experience would be sensation and sound and smell.”

“And taste,” Hannibal reminds him, watches the wicked grin that meets the words.

“And taste,” Anthony agrees, arching his hips again before stretching forward to snare Hannibal’s wine and take a liberal drink from the glass, humming his pleasure at the taste. Entirely petulant, entirely young and energetic and silly, and a fascination to Hannibal completely.

Anthony leans to set the glass down one more, and it has hardly clicked to the table before Hannibal’s hand encircles his throat. The poet yields, eyes hooding as he is lifted, guided gently from Hannibal’s lap, drawing long legs beneath him and bringing his hands to rest on Hannibal’s thigh. He closes his eyes when Hannibal brings their faces close together, he parts his lips and when the kiss he anticipates does not come, he breathes a laugh.

“In the bedroom closet, you will find an assortment of ties and scarves. Select three of good length. Three that please you. And bring them to me.”

And with this instruction, he is released, and nearly topples into Hannibal with his weight so forward in readiness. Dark eyes blink open as Anthony lifts a hand to right his glasses, and he curls backward with a pleased little sound, unfurling to his feet. He stretches long, seeming to always take particular pleasure in his lanky height, and without a word of protest, he pads away in a subtle saunter.

When he returns, after a great deal of perusal, it is with three lengths of fabric held across his arms. One, a white satin opera scarf, expensive and long enough to round Hannibal’s neck and reach his hips. The second is a paisley tie, its pattern crimson spiraling against a field of pale blue. The third is his own well-loved scarf, light enough that he wears it in summer, thin and lengthy enough to wind several times around his throat and still drape across his chest.

He stands just out of arm’s reach, smiling as he holds the lengths of fabric against himself before holding his arm out to let them drape properly.

“Do you have a preference for which goes where?” he asks, voice soft but far from submissive or resigned, the smile lilts beneath it like water under a glacier, dangerous and sharp and clear. “Personally, I would prefer the heavy silk against my eyes, but, this is, after all, _your_ punishment of me, you could ignore my suggestions entirely.”

He does smile, then, and brings a hand up to take off his glasses, clicking them closed and laying them beside the half-finished glass of wine as he steps closer. One foot, then the other, one knee to the couch, the other, so he is straddling the doctor, sliding his other arm beneath the scarves and tie to lay them flat across his lap like an offering, himself much the same.

“Your enthusiasm makes me question the efficacy of this particular punishment,” Hannibal says. He lifts each scarf in turn, studying their weight and thickness, and settles on Anthony’s own first.

“The nature of the experientialist,” answers Anthony, grinning broad and bright. “A new sensation to savor and learn from, to channel to my work.”

“You write about us.”

“I write about what moves me.”

Hannibal hums. He lifts Anthony’s scarf against his eyes, and with precise and careful movements, knots it securely behind his head. “Perhaps then the greater punishment would be to leave you bereft of any sensation at all.”

“Only possible if I’m dead, I’m afraid.”

“A shame,” Hannibal responds, amused. “Though were I to utilize these correctly -”

“Heartless,” sighs Anthony, forever put-upon. “You would miss me too much.”

He bends his arms behind himself as Hannibal loops the necktie around his wrists, chest out and ribs heaving, his breath quickening in anticipation as the silky tie slides smooth against his skin.

Hannibal sits back to regard him, so bound. Chin raised proudly, throat working to swallow and wet a quickly drying throat, pulse humming faster under his skin. He is beautiful. An object of desire wrapped up like a gift. He imagines gifting him to Will as he had that first night over dinner, allowing him to live because he had pleased his husband so. 

He still does.

He pleases both of them.

Hannibal ghosts fingertips just over the tight skin of Anthony’s neck, he knows he can feel it, the poet turning his head to the subtle warmth, though Hannibal never touches him. He trembles, from anticipation, not from fear, and breathes out slowly through his nose before pressing his lips together and parting them.

“They do not lie when they say blind men see all,” he murmurs.

“What do you see?”

“I see you,” Anthony grins, turning his head a little more as Hannibal curls his fingers and ghosts his knuckles across his cheek next. “In beats and pulses, hear you in the pitches of your breath. I can still find you in the darkness you’ve gifted me.”

With a sound of approval, Hannibal picks up the opera scarf and runs a hand beneath it, to watch the way his fingers bend the fabric to the light. He curls it between his knuckles so that the tail drapes just enough for him to skim it over Anthony’s shoulder, and down his chest. The poet arches and moans, his lean musculature tightening to stark relief.

“And what do you feel?”

He bows his head, and Hannibal watches in equal measure the thoughtful movements of Anthony’s mouth, the tension of his belly, the way his shots of grey hair reflect the same sheen as the silken scarf.

“Incredibly aroused,” Anthony decides, grinning crooked. He spreads his knees over the couch and sinks down further into the doctor’s lap, and with a gyration that coils undulating up the length of his body, he adds, “And so are you.”

“It is not every day that a one has such a willing beauty in their lap.”

“Isn’t it?” he laughs, nose wrinkling. “Your husband is - where is your husband? He should play with us, too.”

“The joy of experience,” Hannibal continues, “for one of your nature, is first in the newness itself, and then in the attempt to express those sensations in words that could be understood and keenly felt by those who read them. Your words, Anthony, are your armor and your weaponry both. And so without,” he says, spreading the scarf against Anthony’s lips until they part and the fabric slips between his teeth, “only then you are defenseless.”

A shiver wracks down Anthony’s body with a little moan when the scarf is tightened and he is left blind, helpless and silent. Heat rises in his cheeks, down his neck, his pulse quickens, and when Hannibal lifts a hand to actually touch him, Anthony turns into it with a shudder. 

"Defenseless and at my mercy," he tells the poet. Anthony smiles even around the gag before his lips part wider and his throat clicks on a swallow. Hannibal traces his fingers tickling down the stark tendons in Anthony’s neck and to the top button of his shirt. Slowly, deliberately, he works every button open. The shirt falls open over the younger man's familiar broad chest, sharp collarbones and soft stomach.

Without a word, Hannibal drags his nails sharp down the center of Anthony’s chest. It draws a choked moan, a shiver. Goosebumps immediately pimple his skin and peak the poet’s nipples to hard little nubs.

"Beautiful," Hannibal muses, almost to himself. In his lap the young man squirms, sounds pulling low and needy from his throat as he seeks for more and finds none given. Not yet. This is, after all, a punishment of sorts, a deliberate taking advantage of the vulnerability of his masochistic proclivities. 

Anthony’s tongue curls against the silk as habit drives him to speak, but it’s tight enough that he can do little more than utter soft sounds. They deepen, and his hips drive harder to grind down against Hannibal when the doctor works open his loose slacks, an elegant drape of linen scarcely clinging to narrow hips. He tries to rise to help Hannibal free them but Hannibal instead turns the poet aside. Holding to the tie around his wrists, he tilts Anthony to the couch, face down. Ensuring the the binds are still in place, blind and mute, Hannibal skims his palms down Anthony’s waist to slide his trousers off.

Bare bottom reveals itself to Hannibal’s immense amusement, a twist in his own expectations to see that the poet has worn no underpants today.

“I see that your plot to derail me runs deeper than I might have anticipated,” he notes, his smile curving wider when Anthony presses a muffled laugh into the velvet cushions. Hannibal tugs his trousers off and sets them over the arm of the couch, reaching beneath Anthony’s twitching stomach to bring his cock between his legs, pointing backwards and already stiff. It is notable not for significant size or girth, nor lack thereof, but in its proportions, positively perfect. His foreskin bares the head halfway, revealing how red with blood it’s become so quickly, and virile veins appear across the silky pale skin, winding along the shaft towards the pert corona.

“Listen,” Hannibal says, “to how your pulse echoes, as if underwater. In subway systems, there are valves and releases, to hold at bay the rivers that those tunnels have replaced. Were they to cease function, the underground would flood, filling higher until finally spilling forth from the subways onto the streets. Our hearts are much the same. Our bodies full, vessels taut with the blood they carry - it is only by the push and pull within the heart itself that the system can remain stable.”

Anthony tilts his head, and though his eyes are hidden, Hannibal knows that he listens. He curls a hand around the poet’s cock and tugs downward, resting his other hand on the small of Anthony’s back. The younger man groans. His hips tilt upward.

“And so, in moments of exertion or exultation, we strain it. Our hearts quicken to allow the speeding of blood, to pace it and keep tempo with the demands of our bodies, valves spreading and squeezing, flickering faster and faster. To the switch-signals of our synapses, it is a calamity. To our nervous system, the manner in which the heart races in ecstasy is no different than how it quickens in fear or pain. For all our hind-brains know our moments of greatest pleasure are imminent death, in a system on the verge of collapse.”

He stretches the soft skin that surrounds Anthony’s cock, pulling it to gather wrinkled against his palm, stretching it back to let it slip beneath his scarlet head. The poet’s moan aches from him and he seeks stretching for Hannibal’s fingers, squeezing them once before Hannibal rubs up the bend of Anthony’s back and frees his voice for a moment from its confines.

“ _Petite mort_ ,” he murmurs, and grinning, opens his mouth to accept the silken gag once more.

Hannibal smiles, entirely pleased by the answer, by the responses, by the wonderful obedience that is not reluctant or overly enthusiastic, it just is. He is beautiful, half undressed and tied up, eyes covered, mouth silenced, and yet his body speaks volumes enough that it hardly matters. He seeks intuitively, answers honestly. 

Hannibal bends to kiss the fingers that reach for him, and uncurl like a flower to allow him to kiss the palm, soft and warm, hidden beneath them.

"The French have always had elegant solutions, descriptions of things many other languages have ignored the dynamics of. Emotion and stimulation, a response, in French, rather than a prescription of meaning."

A hand strokes down Anthony’s back to arch it, fingers down the cleft of his ass to watch his legs spread, willing and pleased, a hum of warm sound when Hannibal's hand lingers against him, palm spreading over one cheek as though preparing to strike again.

It is beautiful, watching the muscles gather in anticipation, watching the tension and trembling as the body prepares for pain. But Hannibal does not slap the skin, he leans in to kiss the other cheek, lingering and hot, lips slowly moving inwards towards the hotter flesh, thumb gentle in spreading Anthony for him.

Hannibal hears the hitch of breath at realization, hears the soft little moan that could have been a plea, if allowed to manifest, and leans in to draw just the tip of his tongue over his puckered hole to taste the poet.

And as if releasing all the valves at once, in heart and mind and throat, Anthony’s voice pours forth. It is a shameless sound, rough and raw and pulled from deep inside. He squirms away from the tickling touch and just as soon writhes back, legs spreading and one leg slipping from the couch in his effort to feel that simple touch again.

He pleads, wordless but in a sublime poetry entirely his own. Bound in Hannibal’s tie, the poet’s fingers splay, reach, grasp and he laughs when Hannibal does not yet touch him like that again, a muffled breath behind his teeth and the silk between them. Anthony turns one way over his shoulder, the other, still blind but instinct driving him to try and see.

“You share this, too, with my husband,” Hannibal notes with no small amount of pleasure. “A desire to be consumed in this way, and suffer your own little death from it.”

Anthony’s body snares taut as Hannibal holds him wide again, squeezing his cheek to feel the muscles so tight within. He teases his thumb across Anthony’s hole, stroking soft, hot skin, watching as he quivers there, too, as much as in the rest of his body. Another stroke. Another. Again until Anthony’s voice cracks, begging, and the next stroke is not Hannibal’s thumb, but his tongue, pressed wide and flat.

Breathless, already, from just this, the poet squirms forward, whimpers when he’s held still, and arches his back more instead. Presenting, spreading, needing more, and shaking when he is only given slow licks, tickling strokes of a velvet-rough tongue. His entire body comes alive, sight and movement and voice taken away. He listens to his heart, to his pounding breath, to the way Hannibal’s lips click against his skin with every dizzying lick.

_You undo me..._

Anthony thinks, briefly, of how he had spread Will across the dining room table that first night, how hungrily he had devoured him and watched him lose himself to trembling pleasure and pleading little sounds.

_You're going to tear me apart..._

He sobs, dry and eager, and struggles to push back further, toes arching his foot in an elegant bend off the floor, thighs taut and beautifully defined in their tension. He needs this, aches for it, shivers with every breath and hum and moan pressed wet to the silk between his teeth.

His shoulders shift, involuntary movements to reach for his cock and stroke, muscles rippling rigid as the tie holds him in place. Hannibal hums mild warning. The sound vibrates, carrying up Anthony’s spine and curling his hips higher, an instinctive push to display and present. Only when his hands relax and his lips part, pressed forward onto his shoulders, body at ease but for the deep bend in his back, does Hannibal reward him again.

Not with licking, now, not with teasing. He closes his lips around the poet’s wrinkled hole and teases a noisy kiss against it. Anthony whimpers, his cock beads and drips, darkening the velvet beneath. He is kissed deeper, longer, sucking things wet and long until Anthony’s body shakes outside his control, and his panting breaths hitch into a helpless sob.

He has, perhaps, always loved this. From the first time at university that someone ducked deeper between his legs, met first with resistance and then with immediate yielding, from yielding to desiring, from desiring to demanding. Hannibal relishes the way Anthony quivers against his tongue, and cannot help but think fondly of the first time that Will allowed him to do this, and has insisted on it ever since.

Drip by drip, Anthony shivers in his pleasure. Unable to touch or see or free his voice to show his pleasure, unable to do anything but _take_ it, endure and enjoy and suffer it in its most exquisite agony.

Perhaps his body does think it is about to die, adrenaline pulling goosebumps over his skin, shivers like crawling fingers up his spine. The sobs are constant, now, spit dripping from his lips in languid, pulled lined as he tries to catch his breath and finds it mercilessly stolen. Again and again and again, with clever tongue and pressing lips and just a hint of teeth and _oh_ -

Penetration comes slow and deliberate, Hannibal's tongue curling and spreading and slipping free again, over and over, and Anthony imagines every word he has ever written, every word he has yet to write, flickering before his eyes in endless flashes, mesmerizing and dizzying - so close yet too fast to see or remember. He is seeing the answer to his work, his life, his everything, and all at once it blurs as his fingers clench and his hips rock forward and his poor, swollen cock seeps another drop of pleasure to the damp velvet beneath.

Helpless, uncontrolled, Anthony fucks the air for lack of friction on his cock that begs to be stimulated as the rest of his body is overwhelmed. Sweat shines above his brows, his heart hammers fast enough that the watery pulse he listened for earlier has become a frantic hum. Hannibal straightens his tongue to press it past muscle, well-used in recent days, that parts around him. His mouth latches, sucking as his tongue curls. Obscene sounds, wet and animalistic, earn another shaking sob from the poet.

He is weeping, he realizes with a laugh, voice trapped but that at least breaking free. His cheeks are as wet as Hannibal has left his ass, as wet as the tip of his cock that holds a long thread of precome dangling to the couch below. He is full, Hannibal’s adoration and Hannibal’s tongue seeming to swell inside him until even breathing comes quick and shallow. He is empty, no matter that there is a scarf between his lips, he could not give voice to coherent words even if it were not.

In that moment of stillness and tear-slicked pleasure, Hannibal relents not with his mouth, but with his torment. Anthony’s cock is cruelly hot in his hand, jerking involuntarily when Hannibal curls his hand around it to milk in slow strokes. What peace had come over Anthony is swept away in a wave of movement, heaving back against Hannibal’s tongue, thrusting with abandon down into his hand, his voice filling the room and echoing from the rafters and ancient tile icons overhead.

He is wanton, shameless, loud as he can be with the gag he bites against. He is free. He is beautiful. He can feel the tightness and coiling in his stomach, in his groin. His entire body on fire with sensation and pleasure so keen it borders on pain. He ruts and he arches, nuzzling almost cruelly into the couch beneath as he cannot the man behind.

Stroke by stroke, Anthony breaks apart, shaking and sobbing, tears and spit and come slicking his body where sweat has not dripped yet. Every atom, it seems, bursting to free itself, from his skin, his cock, his lungs... the poet comes until the touches become painful, until his voice pulls high and with a gasp Hannibal lets him free.

Emptied of reason and rational thought, emptied of tears and semen and sweat, Anthony collapses in a slow side against the couch when Hannibal releases him. Moans ebb even still, his hips work thoughtless little grinding motions into the wet velvet. When Hannibal loosens the tie from his wrists, the poet holds them in place still, flexing to return feeling to them as he descends from dizzying heights.

His throat clicks on a hard swallow, and he whimpers until Hannibal loosens the scarf from between his teeth in turn.

Truly, he has taken Anthony’s words from him. He absent his wry remarks and clever rejoinders, absent anything but animal sounds of delight that purr forth. Slowly he brings his arms to his front, curling them beneath his chest where his heart begins to settle to its normal rhythm again, systems returning from the brink of collapse, and eyes still blissfully closed even when that scarf, too, is taken from his eyes.

He rests panting, undone and unmade, and at once remade, reborn, made new and perfect in his enlightenment. He moves only when a rough hand strokes over his cheeks, wet with tears, under his eyes to wipe the tears away. Anthony’s smile draws wide and languid, like a cat in the sun, and only then does he open his eyes, to turn them to look at Hannibal above him.

He is beautiful in his control, held together and poised, touching Anthony until he returns to him, bright-eyed and clever. The poet reaches, and with a gentle push to make room, Hannibal lays himself at his side and pulls the man into his arms. He nuzzles, against Hannibal’s still-clothed chest, against the pulse that has sped, even a little, listening to Anthony’s entire being explode and come together again.

Anthony grins again, laughs, a warm purring sound as he spreads his fingers against Hannibal’s shirt and presses his nose to the warm soft skin beneath the man’s jaw.

“A much more effective lesson than a spanking,” he comments, voice rough from disuse and overuse both. He swallows carefully, brings his lip between his teeth. “And yet -”

Hannibal hums a question, brow lifting as he smooths sweat-sleek strands of hair back from Anthony’s face.

“I can’t say it’s done much to dissuade me from interrupting you again,” the poet laughs. “And again, and again. Will is a lucky man to be in your capable hands. You’re setting a new standard for care, doctor.”

The name and title pull Hannibal’s mind two ways, and in doing, the fabric of his thoughts stretches near to tearing. He swallows, resting his cheek against Anthony’s hair. On cue, the front door clicks closed and footsteps approach the sitting room.

“I am a doctor of academia,” he reminds his poet. This too is met with a laugh.

“Of course you are,” Anthony agrees, and he leans up to press their mouths together rather than ask anything more about it. Hannibal draws a breath, past the immediate rush of masculinity that fills his nose - sweat and semen and heady muskiness - and seeks beyond it, pulling for threads of cheap aftershave and supermarket soap.

He can hear movement, can hear the tossing of a bag to the floor, a sigh as shoes are worked off tired feet and left to fall where they drop. He can hear, he can sense, but he cannot smell. Not the aftershave, not the soap, not the lingering tang of dog fur.

Lavender shampoo, perhaps.

“Hannibal.”

Beneath his hands, the velvet of the couch feels damp but smells clean. Before him is just the back of it, no soft body in between, no clinging hands and whispered words. Hannibal turns further into the seat and breathes it in. 

Dust. Age. Polish and new wood.

“Perhaps a bath would do you well,” Bedelia tells him, standing close enough to sense, enough to see, were he so inclined. “I think I might retire to bed.”

She lingers a beat more, and Hannibal wonders if she too can feel the ghosts of those who moved in this space just before.

“I will join you shortly,” he murmurs, and though he can hear her lips part to speak, she does not, and after a moment soft footsteps carry her towards the stairs.

No, he knows. She can’t feel them here, because they never were. They exist in another time. Another place. Another sequence of stitches seamed together over time into a tactile whole. He thinks of them, parallel to where he lays now, and allows the thin comfort of imagining their happiness, wherever they are.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It is a worthy task,” Hannibal hums, “tiring out my husband in bed.”_
> 
> _“I believe it,” Anthony laughs, gently squeezing against Will’s thigh as he arches his back and turns his face to Hannibal, his hips lifted towards the poet. “But then, to whom did the little snuffling snores belong to last night, hmm? While you and I were conversing on the topic of -”_
> 
> _“- 19th-century Italian architecture,” Hannibal finishes, delighted, kissing away the blush that warms Will’s cheeks so beautifully. “Perhaps we misheard.”_

There are differences between being alone, and loneliness.

The former is a choice. A conscious decision made to not share one’s company with others, whether due to the pressures of work or a need for introspection. It does not always require a distaste for one’s potential company, but that is a potential factor, always, that may lead one to separate.

The latter is a result. Outside one’s power, it is a product, rather than a reagent. Spend too much time with one’s own company, only, and the quiet that once settled settled peaceful instead becomes the smothering silence of snow.

There is a fountain in the courtyard of the Palazzo Capponi.

Though it echoes the original late Gothic style of the exterior, Hannibal knows it is a falsehood. Installed in the 19th century and set into the walls, the fountain even bears on its edifice a lie so bold that Hannibal would be remiss to consider how much of his day has been spent spiting it. The Uzzano coat of arms stands center, despite no one of that name having resided at the Palazzo for centuries before its installation. Carved shallow into the cream-colored marble, is their emblem - a flaming pyre.

And from the center of the charge, beneath the fire, funnels a constant burbling of water into the basin below.

Irony is a low humor.

Hannibal presses his brow to his forearm, set against the wooden window frame. Though the vaulted ceilings spread high above, the entire _piano nobile_ at his disposal and open to none but those who he invites, he can feels the walls so near that he draws a breath, as if by that minute expansion he might feel ancient marble pressed against his back. The water pours forth endless below, and he considers the poetry of mimicking the Uzzano charge with a conflagration of his own.

Reagent.

Reaction.

Product.

He closes his eyes. The sound rises, filling his ears with the damp sound of its little clicks and murmurs. His lips part.

There is a whisper against them, like breath but warmer, fingertips perhaps.

“Perhaps he’s still sleeping.”

“Unacceptable.”

“I suppose he should have his rest,” Anthony murmurs, and Hannibal feels that gentle brush against his lips again and resists closing them, for the sake of pretense for just a moment more. “If he’s to have us so soon after the first time.”

“It’s unlike him to sleep until mid-afternoon, I’m impressed we tired him,” Will replies, voice softer, and when the whisper comes again, Hannibal snares it gently between his teeth. Fingertips, as he’d guessed.

A laugh, and warm lips replace them.

Hannibal hears again the patter of watery white noise, but it is not that anachronistic travesty from the courtyard, no. It is the faint movement of Will’s mouth against his own, touching kisses from one corner to the other, suckling his lower lip for a heartbeat before teasing away again. The sounds comfort the caged pacing of Hannibal’s heart, and he releases his tension with a hum as he sinks deeper against his husband.

Sheets whisper cool against their skin as they draw closer together in their bed, with soft smiles wholly aware that there is no nearness ever sufficient for them. They have tried to all but live inside the other, occupying forces trying to invade and defend all at once, pressing into the other’s thoughts at the same time as they struggled to cut their own invader loose. It feels long ago, too long ago to reach for now, especially now when Will fans his fingers across Hannibal’s cheek and turns his head aside, sending a small smile to their sometimes-third.

“We didn’t tire him enough,” Will murmurs, eyes closing and grin spreading lazy as he lifts his chin for Hannibal to suck softly beneath.

“Nor, you, apparently,” Anthony tells him softly, leaning in to kiss his cheek as Will’s smile grows, as he frees one hand to curl it back around the poet’s head, messy hair between his fingers, warm and bent by sleep.

“I never tire.”

“Do you not?” Wet kisses tease down Will’s jaw and to his throat, sucking against his pulse as Hannibal continues his soft nuzzling exploration of Will’s collarbone and chest. “What a blessed challenge then.”

Will stretches his free hand down between himself and Hannibal and strokes through the chest hair he so loves to press close to, to kiss and nuzzle into, to gently tug and sleep against. His smile widens a little more when Anthony slips a hand down his side, over the curve of his hip to hook cool fingers just against the inside of Will’s thigh.

“It is a worthy task,” Hannibal hums, “tiring out my husband in bed.”

“I believe it,” Anthony laughs, gently squeezing against Will’s thigh as he arches his back and turns his face to Hannibal, his hips lifted towards the poet. “But then, to whom did the little snuffling snores belong to last night, hmm? While you and I were conversing on the topic of -”

“- 19th-century Italian architecture,” Hannibal finishes, delighted, kissing away the blush that warms Will’s cheeks so beautifully. “Perhaps we misheard.”

“We must have, so ensconced in conversation. I only had his thighs across my lap,” Anthony reasons, “but his head was in yours. What did you hear?”

“Not a snore, certainly,” says Hannibal. He stretches when Will tugs against his chest hair, caught between his fingers, and turns Will’s head aside with another kiss against his scruffy jaw. “A complaint perhaps.”

“Grumbling,” adds Anthony.

“Expressing without need for words his displeasure with our long-windedness.”

“Displeasure for using our mouths to speak rather than worship him.”

“You’re both insufferable,” Will murmurs, curling his hand tighter in Anthony’s hair to bring him closer still, and seek a clumsy kiss from the corner of his mouth. The poet yields with a smile, pressing chest to back with the older man, abandoning his exploration of Will’s thigh to reach past him and stroke his knuckles down Hannibal’s side instead.

“And you call me a masochist,” complains Anthony, narrowed eyes meeting Hannibal’s in delight. “What do you call someone like this?”

“Married,” Will mumbles. He grins when he feels Hannibal’s snort against his skin, Anthony’s laugh much louder, and just as warm.

“Yes you are,” Hannibal whispers, and Will curls a hand against his neck and holds him close, so contented, so entirely happy to be in the middle of them, warm and touched and loved and still sore from the sound fucking he had received not hours before from Anthony and Hannibal both.

“I don’t,” Will sighs, wriggling back against Anthony again, ducking to kiss his arm where it stretches over him to touch Hannibal, the older man’s hand slipping languidly through long thin fingers. “Want to get up today. At all.”

“And what would you propose doing instead?” Hannibal asks him. He smiles soft when Will makes a fussy sound and stretches his neck to press his head against Anthony’s shoulder for a moment.

“Lazing in bed,” he replies after a pause. “Coffee. Conversation. Lazy, deep and slow morning sex.”

Anthony sighs another laugh into Will's shoulder and grins, "Insatiable. There's another word for you."

"Like criticizing a hungry man at a buffet for eating his fill," Will says.

"I resent that remark. We are no cheap buffet. We are a feast, Will, of epicurean delights."

Will squints at Hannibal, but only for a moment before his eyes flutter closed from the sensation of Anthony's hand returning to his body. Long fingers press firm against his ass, teasing just between his cheeks. The color that floods the smooth expanse beneath Will's eyes is heady as Cabernet and just as red, and Hannibal leans in to taste it.

"You're still fucked wide open," the poet notes, to a disapproving hum from the doctor and a flash of white teeth in Will's grin.

"Who said that you're having me again?" he asks. Reaching behind himself to snare the back of Anthony's neck, he pulls him forward. Squirming in a blissful tangle of limbs, they trade positions, Anthony facing Will and Hannibal at the poet's back.

"Why me?" he answers, feigning dismay made transparent in his rakish smirk. "We could enjoy the good doctor instead. I can only imagine - and do, often - the sounds he would make, the languages he'd speak with both of us inside him. Like the Tower of Babel."

“Who said we’re having you again?” Hannibal counters, nuzzling into the warm curls at the back of Anthony’s neck until the poet laughs and Will kisses him until the sound warms to a moan instead.

“Cruel,” Anthony complains instead, leaning in to kiss Will again. “Rude. You know, the longer I stay, the meaner you are to me.”

“Are we?”

“Entirely,” the poet grins, turning to look over his shoulder at Hannibal as the doctor moves to lie partially over him, chin on Anthony’s arm. “I make breakfast and occasionally dinner, I have been demoted to watching -”

“Demoted?” Will snorts, leaning closer as well, slipping a leg between Anthony’s own until he hums, contented, and drapes an arm over Will where he lies, nuzzling against him.

“I suppose I misspoke,” he allows, grinning. “Perhaps… reallocated is more accurate.”

“And you make a very fine breakfast,” Hannibal adds, to Anthony’s preening delight.

He watches as Will leans close enough to confirm Hannibal’s words with a kiss, just a touch, soft and little, and in its simplicity so intimate that Anthony makes a small sound to see it so near. He runs the backs of his fingers across their cheeks, not seeking to interrupt - never that - but merely to absorb the tenderness that they have let him know.

“It sounds like you’re volunteering,” Will finally says, as he lays back down with a sleepy smile.

“I make a very fine many things.”

“Except for that sentence,” chides Hannibal lightly. “Atrocious grammar.”

“Inventive,” Anthony protests. “You’re dodging the point.”

“Which is?”

“Why eat the food I make when you can just go to the source instead and eat me?”

His joke, accompanied by his own bright laugh, brings a beat of silence between the other two men. Their eyes meet, lingering no longer than their kiss had moments before, and it is Will who speaks before the moment can grow uneasy and unsettle them from their peace.

“Crude,” he murmurs. His mild chastisement is followed by a press of teeth into Anthony’s shoulder, who squints and writhes, grinning, and misses entirely the shadow that passes through Hannibal’s eyes.

“I didn’t mean it,” Anthony says. “Not the part about eating me out - that I meant _entirely_ \- but about being forced into _only_ watching. You’re magnificent together. It’s like performance art, only not terrible. You know you’ve never actually told me where you met.”

Hannibal hums and rests his chin a little more comfortably against Anthony’s shoulder, tugging him gently to turn, Will’s hands helping and then lingering against Anthony’s side and over his stomach, holding him close and pressing up comfortably behind with a nuzzle. He watches Hannibal with clear blue eyes, curious and playful, and licks his lip into his mouth.

“We met before a lecture,” Will says, a lie masked in a truth - he had been about to escape the FBI field office for his class on psychoanalysis. “And believe it or not, Dr. Lecter was very rude to me, and I did not want to speak with him again.”

Anthony’s smile, ever-present, narrows his eyes. “I don’t believe it, actually.”

“No?”

“I can’t imagine him being anything but a gentleman,” he muses. “A know-it-all, maybe. Too clever and well-read in actuality to be called pretentious, but makes a good go of it anyway. ‘Insufferable’, as you said -”

“All of the above,” agrees Will. Hannibal tucks a curl of hair behind his ear and he lets his eyes hood comfortably.

“And despite a curt dismissal, wherein my now-husband made it abundantly clear that he did not ever wish to speak to me again, all I could think about was when I’d see him next.”

“A twist,” Anthony gasps. He tucks an arm behind his head, and rests the other around Hannibal’s shoulders. “Both of you, being so entirely rude to the other? I can’t imagine it.” A pause, and he arches a brow. “Professors should never sleep together, especially if they teach the same subject. All the dirty talk just becomes insulting each other’s journal articles.”

“Good thing I was never a professor,” Will mumbles against Anthony’s shoulder, kissing against it over and over, drawing his nose over the smooth skin. “I wanted nothing to do with professors, I’d had my fill of them.” He considers his words for a moment before sending a smirk over to Hannibal, leaning up to murmur warmly in Anthony’s ear. “Professorship was something one needed a taste for, and I had not developed one yet.”

The poet shivers, pleasant smile warming his cheeks, and lifts his eyebrows at Hannibal in front of him, who merely hums, directing his eyes to Anthony’s and leaning in to kiss him, sweet and slow.

“I brought him breakfast -”

“- in my motel room -”

“- a week from our first meeting, when he had been asked to come to consult on a particularly difficult design we had uncovered in an old tome in the Baltimore Library.”

“And I let him in.”

The words warm Anthony into a pleased little wriggle, squeezing himself between the two men, pressing down into the plush mattress. He looks between them both, imagining their story as was told to him, not naive - never that - but guileless when it comes to them.

Trusting, rather than scheming.

Accepting, rather than prying.

“Very brave to eat a strange man’s breakfast,” he says, turning his face towards Will but watching Hannibal from the corners of his eyes. “So you -”

“A consultant,” Will answers. “Delving into particular works of artistry and assisting with research.”

Anthony grins, finds Will’s warm smile not only a comfort but a welcome, just as he does the nuzzle and warm sigh against him that follows. The story has had its edges worn, not in cruelty but in the number of times the people within it have turned them to remember. There is a strange understanding there, a familiarity that transcends the playfulness they all share together. Intimacy. Secrets.

Anthony’s smile grows mischievous.

“And who -”

“- Hannibal,” Will replies, sliding his hand down Anthony’s stomach to stroke him, just once.

“Against the ladder in my office.”

The low sound of delight carries down the length of the poet’s body, ending in an upward twist of his hips, cock slipping soft between Will’s fingers. He turns his fond look from one to the other, mischievous as he watches the heavy-lidded doctor study Will’s hand at work.

“That is every bit as dangerous as it is hot,” he decides. “You’re a risk-taker.”

“None riskier than the first time that, in turn, Will -”

“Where?”

“In my office,” Will answers. “Across the desk.”

“God,” sighs Anthony, stomach tightening as his cock fills, slower now after the morning’s exertions, but hardening a little more with each stroke. “You’re the kinds of teachers I wished I had at Cambridge.”

“Pulling hapless students into our depravity? Banish the thought,” Hannibal smiles, leans in to mouth against the bouncing pulse at Anthony’s throat until the next sound pulled from him is a moan. “No, for a very long time Will took great pleasure in leaving evident physical marks of his put-on displeasure all over my skin. It took months before we had a dinner that was mutually enjoyed.”

“Or that he admitted to enjoying,” Anthony asks, humming, pleased, and stretching along his back like a puppy seeking attention. His lips part silent when Hannibal’s lips latch warmly to a nipple and suck, as Will continues to languidly stroke.

“And so, dinner after dinner, and fuck after fuck became overnight stays,” Will tells him, nosing behind Anthony’s ear. “Became making love. Became an elopement.”

Anthony frees his arm from beneath his head and runs his hand through Hannibal’s hair, as much to feel the soft greying strands slip through his fingers as to keep him right where he is. He shivers, arching towards the doctor’s mouth, and his other hand splays against Will’s shoulders.

“You didn’t,” he laughs. “Of course you did. Cursing each other and rutting in corners the entire way, I imagine.”

“You’re not far off.”

“Incredible,” he sighs. “You’re both incredible. Where did you go? Don’t tell me here. I won’t be able to stand another moment of not kissing you if you say here.”

Will grins, turns his head to look at Anthony, lifts his eyes to Hannibal and bites his lip, and Hannibal’s heart flutters, speeds, as it so rarely does, to see him here, happy, alive, beautiful, and in love. With him. With Anthony. With this. With life itself.

“Here,” Will whispers, dropping his eyes to the poet again, shifting to set his leg between Anthony’s own so he can rub against it as Will withdraws his hand and moves to touch Hannibal instead. “In a place he had made for us. By buying a house and furnishing it. Over-confident bastard.”

Will laughs and parts his lips wide as Anthony curses and drags him close to kiss, as he promised. One hand twines in his hair, the other seeks for Hannibal, arching his wrist for him to kiss as well, before Anthony turns, murmurs soft amusement against the older man and kisses him next. From Hannibal then to Will, touching a teasing little kiss to his lips. From Will once more to Hannibal, nearer now than before. Then both, at once, as they kiss each other against Anthony’s mouth. It is a clumsy thing, a tangle of tongues and lips all brushing without any regard for whom they touch, without any care.

It doesn’t matter, when joined by the affection they share together.

There is no real beginning to them here, no discernible end. They live without worry or guilt or jealousy; they love just as comfortably. Their limbs tangle and their bodies press, cocks hardening and hearts skipping faster, hands skimming over flushed skin and coarse hair, kisses sweeping together.

“I talk about you, you know.”

Hannibal’s breath stills for a beat, and Will lifts a brow towards the poet.

“Not in specifics,” Anthony clarifies, dragging Will to rut against his back, and rocking his hips against Hannibal’s own. “But when I travel, I can’t help but mention the particularly brilliant, unfairly lovely married couple with whom I stay when I’m in Florence.” His brows knit for an instant, he parts his lips with his tongue, and his laugh is a little softer. “If we’re not careful, people will say we’re in love.”

It is Hannibal, then, who kisses him first, eyes closed and lips pressing almost harshly to Anthony’s as though to swallow his words or reverse them. Will watches, stroking his fingers soft down the poet’s chest, his other softer still through Hannibal’s hair. They are not ones for love. The word is foreign. A conceptualization and not a reality, and yet - 

And yet.

And yet he loves his husband, every morning turning to murmur soft sweet nothings into Hannibal’s ear.

And yet he loves this man, their unintended yet entirely welcome third.

Perhaps love is merely in the wording, in the words themselves.

“You are the poet,” Will murmurs, kissing Anthony when Hannibal pulls back and the younger man draws a breath, humming soft when he touches Will’s face to hold him still. “I suppose it is with your words that we will know if we are.” Will’s smile is wide, eyes narrowed, and he slinks himself up over the poet’s chest and slowly pushes himself down his body, knees to the bed, bending and arching his hips as he goes. “Be careful with them.”

Anthony swallows, the movement enough that Hannibal sees his throat work, hears its click. But then he breathes, and the little pluck of tension that came over him softens. He runs a hand through Will’s hair.

“I always am,” he says, as a smile tugs one corner of his lips higher. “Six to eight months just to steal a line from _Oklahoma_.”

Will snorts a quick laugh and Anthony tugs him closer to kiss, both smiling wide into it, no pressure overbearing them, no insistence on titles or need for possession. It is enough that he is welcomed and wanted there with them - enough for him to speak his feelings and have them heard. Framing Will’s face with both hands, Anthony relents in the tangled kiss and relinquishes him only to allow Hannibal to share them both in turn.

He curls a leg up Will’s hip as he watches them kiss, the way their eyes remain a little open, as if closing their eyes might make the other disappear. Content to listen to the soft sounds they make, to bask in their glow, Anthony rocks his hips lazily against Will above him, settling a hand to Hannibal’s cheek with a little stroke of his thumb. Always touching, all three, unless one is away. Always together, whenever they can be.

Unless one is not there.

Will breaks the kiss with a lovely little gasped moan, and turns his head into the rough hand that cups his cheek, nuzzling Hannibal as he reaches to touch Anthony in just the same way, comfortable and close and loving. Then, with a grin, Will turns to kiss Hannibal’s palm and moves away down Anthony’s body again, kissing hot sucking kisses against the sharp jut of his hip, the hollow of his groin, nuzzling with a moan, entirely sinful, into the wiry hair at the base of his poet’s cock.

Anthony curses, laughs and draws a hand over his face as he arches up, seeking and impatient. He lifts his eyes to Hannibal’s, watching him too, just as content, just as warmly delighted, before he, too, moves down Anthony’s body, and the poet’s eyes widen.

“Well.”

He watches Will’s eyes flick bright to him and narrow in mischievous pleasure. Of the two of them, Will adores having a cock in his mouth, be it Anthony or Hannibal, it hardly matters - he moans like he’s starved for it. Anthony swallows, as Hannibal draws a hand through Will’s hair to tug it straight and pull his husband up a little. Will’s eyes shift just enough, before returning to look at Anthony again.

“Open up,” the poet coaxes, grinning, as Will does just that.

Anthony murmurs a curse, delighted, as he rocks his hips upward. His eyes slip closed as his cock parts Will’s waiting lips, sliding slick across his tongue. Will’s mouth closes with a restful hum, relaxed and ready - his throat jerks in a quick swallow as he takes Anthony to the back of his mouth. Hannibal’s fingers curl in Will’s hair, not to pull him away but to send goosebumps across his skin. He does, and Anthony shivers, grinning.

Perhaps love is merely in the wording.

Perhaps it’s in the joining.

Will spreads his knees across the mattress and lowers himself, hands braced to Anthony’s thighs rather than against his cock. That he holds in sway, between flushed lips made slick with spit, between hollowed cheeks that pull a long, wet suck along the entire length of his shaft. Anthony squeezes his eyes shut tighter as a moan spills out loud, lingering drawn out and long until suddenly cut short by the sensation of a second mouth against his full, flushed cock.

He blinks, ducks his head, and drops it back with a laughed curse before biting against the side of his finger. Hannibal mouths against the base of his cock as Will devours the tip, mouths practiced at this, and working together, to bring Anthony this pleasure because all three want it… he can barely breathe.

He manages another laugh and presses his palm against his eyes as he grins.

Hannibal gently takes one thigh to spread as Will leans against the other, drawing up their poet’s knees to spread him further, wider, as, briefly, there is reprieve, as Will pulls off entirely and Hannibal immediately takes his place.

“Mmm, _fuck_.”

Anthony’s chest rises and falls in quick pants as Will ducks his head further and sucks his balls into his mouth, working the silken skin against his tongue, gently grazing it with his teeth before he turns to suck kisses against the base of Anthony’s cock, up and up until he distracts Hannibal’s own mouth with a kiss. Clever hands work the foreskin down Anthony’s cock, the sensitive tip caught between their hungry mouths as they kiss, softly moan, and then Will turns to take Anthony in his mouth again.

One of the most beautiful parts of their poet is also his greatest strength in his craft. He is overwhelmed by beauty, by sensation, willing and ready to suffer the pains of pleasure at their hands and exult in it. His back lifts from the bed, spine curling in a fluid thrust up into Will’s mouth. Shoulders pressed against the pillow beneath him, he arcs his head back and bares his throat, stretched so tight that his choked gasp is visible when it jerks along that pale length.

Two mouths, both alike in symmetry, curl together in tandem to leave no part of his cock untouched. When Will rubs his lips sucked hard against the ridge of Anthony’s bared head, Hannibal turns his head aside to latch against the shaft, tongue curling in a broad sideways stroke over the vein pulsing quick over its length. When Will relents to breathe, tracing the tip of his tongue up and down and down and up, Hannibal buries Anthony’s cock into his mouth, until the tip brushes against his throat.

And each time they meet in passing, they kiss, around the thick member flushed twitching between them. Lips and tongues and the barest scrape of teeth that leaves their poet quivering, trembling, dropping his hand from his eyes to press through their hair and hold them close. A confessional precedes worship - one must reveal their ignominies before they can be forgiven for them. His words linger, his unabashed love for them both, and they return his honesty threefold with truths their mouths can speak, but not with words.

Over and over, they tease, and over and over they kiss, until Anthony wants to tear his own hair out from how good it feels, how good they feel, how beautiful they look together. And then as unexpectedly as it had started, so, suddenly, does the sweet torment end. Hannibal kisses him first, leaning up and splaying a hand against the side of his neck, Will mouths against Anthony’s sensitive peaked nipples and bites one of them softly until the poet groans.

“Cruel,” he sighs, licking his lips, arching his neck as Hannibal kisses against it. Anthony reaches out for Will, finds his lips wet and soft against his fingertips. “Brutal lovers.”

“Generous,” Hannibal reminds him, and Anthony smiles.

“Oh, always. But would you leave me so unsatisfied?”

“What satisfaction wouldst thou have tonight?” Will asks. He folds his hands against Anthony’s chest, grinning when the man snorts and ducks his head to look at him.

“Are you wooing me with Shakespeare, Will?”

“Is it working?”

“Well, you could have chosen a better play,” Anthony relents, brows up. Will just smiles at him, a bright and false thing, and brings one of his hands down to casually stroke his leaking cock again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Anthony drags the fricative and laughs out the rest, and Will kisses against his stomach before sinking down to take him into his mouth again. He moves lazy and slow, eyes up to see if Hannibal will join him again as the poet wraps his legs around Will’s shoulders and holds him close.

Hannibal runs his fingers through Will’s hair, thumb stroking across his temple. With only a twitch of muscle, he guides Will’s head lower, eyes hooding with a pleased purr as Will’s mouth sinks deeper onto Anthony’s cock. He curls his grip to bring Will up again, holding him with lips circled around the head, and finds a steady rhythm as Will goes lax to the pleasure of Anthony’s dick filling his mouth and his husband’s hand directing the movements. He gasps, spit slicking his chin, when he is finally given reprieve, and turns bright blue eyes up to their poet.

“I gave thee mine before thou didst request it,” Will murmurs, thumbing a bead of spit from his lower lip. “And yet I would it were to give again.”

“Your satisfaction?” Anthony asks.

The narrowing of Will’s eyes is answer enough. Hannibal tugs Will’s curls straight to bring him upward, sinking into a kiss to lick the flavor of their poet from his tongue, and Anthony wriggles upward, pulling up his long legs from under Will to let him lay instead. The bed is large enough for all three to lie side by side and never touch, but it has never been used in such an unfathomable fashion. They are tangled together, always, twisted into half the space available to them and forced to pleasant squirming when they change positions.

As Hannibal lays Will back onto the bed, still entrenched in a smothering kiss, Anthony reaches for the lube beside the bed and squirts it into his palm. Long strokes coat him slick and shining as he watches the older men lay worship to each other with reverent palms and wordless sighs. His hand is cold and wet when it slides between Will’s legs to widen him, delighted by the ease with which his fingers press inside the well-fucked ring of puckered skin.

“Insatiable,” he whispers, grinning crooked.

Will says nothing to that, contented to stretch and groan softly, dropping a hand to hold Anthony’s wrist, another out to seek through Hannibal’s hair. He is, in moments, entirely masochistic with sex. He will push himself to the point of exhaustion, sometimes genuine pain, to find his euphoria. Conversely, other days he seeks intimacy from both, pushing shallowly and slow into Anthony, holding his face in his hands and shivering at the kisses showered on him.

Today, he wants the former. A lazy build to _just too much_ before he can curl like a cat against the two of them.

He grins as Anthony reaches with his other hand to stroke up Hannibal as well, arching up into a kiss the doctor seeks from him, open-mouthed and deep. They are beautiful, they all are, in any configuration, and Will cannot get enough of them.

Hannibal leans into the kiss and into the poet. He sets his hand to Will’s ass, Anthony’s fingers already splaying wide, and spreads Will open further. With a moan, Will writhes, squirming to try and bring his legs together, in truth just to feel Hannibal hold them apart. He watches the sweep of Hannibal and Anthony’s tongues together, the ripples of pleasure that tighten up Hannibal’s body each time he’s tugged.

Will’s whine is a breathy, needy thing, and deepens only as the other men look to him in amusement.

“Spoiled for attention,” Anthony muses.

“Spoiled in every way I can ensure,” agrees Hannibal.

The poet turns from Hannibal and drops to his hands over Will, knees beneath his thighs to trap his legs, the tip of his cock teasing Will’s ready entrance. He rocks his hips to feel Will’s tension quiver through him, until tickled and desirous, Will huffs a laugh.

“Goddammit,” he sighs, pleading, but for his trouble he only gets a clicked tongue.

“My husband has forgotten his manners,” Hannibal tells Anthony, whispering close against his ear. “One should always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when someone has done something nice for them.”

Will curses softly, in French or something like it, and tugs at the sheets until he is in a lazy sprawl, lips pressed together before they part again, on a smile.

"Thank you," he offers, "for indulging the whims of a madman."

"That you certainly are," Anthony laughs, and leans closer to kiss Will as he slips into him, feeling Will’s body tense just once before relaxing in pleasure. He reaches for his husband and finds him close, already kissing his way over Will's chest and up to his neck, catching the corner of the poet’s mouth when he reaches near enough.

It is a languid fucking, nothing like the one before, this one driven by raised hips and gentle swearing, hot kisses and brushes of fingers. Anthony changes the angle of his hips and as soon as he finds that place in Will that has him gritting his teeth, he pulls out of him, bends almost reverently against Hannibal’s back as the other moves to take him, watching Will with hooded eyes.

“May I?” Anthony murmurs, and without letting his gaze move from Will, Hannibal’s smile curves a little more.

“Please.”

“Thank you.”

Anthony grasps Hannibal’s cock, stroking slow, his tunneled hand brushing Will’s hole when he reaches the tip. With a sleepy smile he watches the shiver that ricochets up Will’s spine and spills into goosebumps over his skin. He watches Hannibal raise his hips and settle his chest, laying heavy atop his husband. Anthony guides Hannibal’s cock to Will’s entrance, and keeps his hand there a moment more as Hannibal rocks himself in, fucking the poet’s hand and his husband’s ass all at once.

When Anthony lets go, it is with an unfurling of fingers, fanned deliberately across sensitive skin. He laughs at the quaking moan that breaks from Will, and sits on his heels to touch himself in lazy tugs while he watches.

Hannibal takes Will’s breath away. Apt, considering the years - is it years? Anthony never asked - the man has continuously done nothing but. Slow in, slow out, angled deliberately away until Will squirms, finds the position that his prostate is perfectly struck, and curses with a moan when immediately Hannibal pulls out and away from him.

Will presses a hand to his face and with a groan, turns onto his face, drawing his knees beneath himself and arching his back. He is open and slick already, beautifully filthy, as he considers how full he will be at the end, how weak his muscles.

Then they can sleep more, together. 

Then they can wake, again, together.

Anthony drapes across Will’s back, chest pressed flush enough that Will can feel his heart speeding. He thrusts in without pretense or preamble, burying himself deep again and again, driving Will’s voice into gasped panting as the bed rocks beneath them. Behind the poet, the doctor - he curls over Anthony and rounds his spine, rutting between his cheeks. Will’s knees give, spreading further beneath the combined weight of both men against him, pinning him to the mattress.

His cock grinds against the sheets with every thrust inside of him, Anthony’s cock pushed deeper by Hannibal’s insistent rhythm. Will splays his fingers and grasps the pillow beneath his cheek, eyes closed and lips parted for every vocal breath they push from him. Faster, they fuck in tandem, harder and deeper, both men seeking to fill the insatiable one beneath.

Will loses himself, no longer noticing when one pulls free and another takes his place. He knows them both so intimately, knows their size and girth, their taste and unique musky smell, but right then... right then.

"Can I touch," he murmurs, grins when Hannibal makes a sound indicating he certainly may not. The pressure changes, their poet moving away for just a moment as Hannibal thrusts deep and long into Will beneath him.

"Up.”

Simple, gentle, commanded by Anthony rather than Hannibal, and Will obeys on shaking limbs and with wide spread thighs, laughing when there is a kiss against his leg, up higher, turned inwards to the hot sensitive skin. An arm snakes beneath his chest and Will is lifted, onto his knees and back against Hannibal’s chest.

Will has barely a moment to moan before a hot mouth circles him and he's almost undone entirely.

For as talented as Anthony is with his words, he is just as skilled when silenced. His smile shows in his eyes when his lips curve into a suck around Will's scarlet-headed cock, hot against his tongue and salty with precome. He pops Will's cock free only to push it back again, and again, and again, until trembling, Will curses. He sets one hand to Anthony's hair to grip him tight, and loops the other back around his husband's neck, ruddy-cheeked and blissful as Hannibal drives inside of him and Anthony meets every thrust with his mouth.

He spreads his tongue wide and flat, licking Will's shaft from base to tip. He follows the veins that pulse virile, and bowed over Will's cock, feels the tempo of the older man's pulse quicken against his lips. Will's fingers spread, tangled in the poet's black and grey strands, and Anthony moans around his cock when Hannibal's hand presses over his husband's, fingers interlaced. They both tighten, gripping just enough to tug a shiver of pain, and Anthony lifts his eyes from where he kneels, Will's cock plugging his mouth every time Hannibal buries himself in his husband.

He doesn't hear Hannibal's whispered words, pressed to Will's ear with a hand around his throat, but he knows their meaning well enough. Burying his nose into Will's thick pubic hair, Anthony takes Will to the back of his mouth and relaxes just as hot spurts pulse down his throat. His shoulders tighten, he chokes with a little heave, but he swallows, throat jerking quickly to take down the mouthful of semen.

Will’s sounds are entirely helpless now, thighs still spread, taut and shaking and pale. His hand curls with Hannibal’s against Anthony’s hair but their pressure eases, allowing him up whenever he wishes as Will turns to kiss against Hannibal’s cheek, sloppy uncoordinated kisses that bring a grin to his face.

Then his lips part, and as Anthony sits back, Will shivers through Hannibal’s orgasm within him.

It is a slow changeover, two men exhausted and one awaiting, and Anthony lies back on the bed as he had been. He reaches to stroke over Will’s cheek with the backs of his knuckles as strong hands find him and slip against his chest, down to the bed as Will lowers himself over the poet again with a whispered laugh.

“You undo me,” he breathes, kissing just under Anthony’s neck as Hannibal pulls free of Will and Will sits closer against the man beneath him, inviting, still, exhausted and messy and mussed.

So Anthony pushes in, slow and deliberate, hands down against Will’s hips to hold him where he is and feel him take Anthony all the way to the base with long, drawn-out groan.

He was slick before, but now Will is absolutely wet. Hannibal's come smoothes the movement of Anthony's cock, wonderfully hot. He arches upward in a helpless shudder as a bead of semen drips slowly down to his pubic hair, his length coated in it as Will rocks forward and tilts his hips out before sinking back down.

Anthony laughs, already precariously close to finishing. He reaches for Will's neck to drag him into a kiss, lips still salty with the older man's release. He turns his head aside to take Hannibal's tongue into his mouth too, letting him taste his own husband's come. He hardly has to move as Will lifts and lowers himself, and his fingernails dig crescents into Anthony's chest. All their poet has to do now is watch and study the glow like embers that settles into their cheeks, the lithe undulations of Will as he rides him, the slick mess covering his cock before it disappears into Will again.

"Four," Anthony breathes, snared into another kiss again - Hannibal this time. "Four times today you've -" Will catches him then, pushing a hand against his face. "Four times you've been filled today. Fucking filthy," he grins, just an instant of broad white teeth before he gasps in blissful pain from the scrape of Will's nails down his chest.

"Only three so far," Will answers.

To that, Anthony can only shake his head once before it tilts back and he groans, body pulling rigid as he loses himself.

Will rides this out as well, nails dug into pink skin, lips parted red and wet, eyes barely open, just slices of blue beneath long lashes. He is trembling, he is flushed and bright and delighted. And when he slips from Anthony to lay over him, snaring an arm around Hannibal before he flops from atop their poet to the bed between the two of them, he murmurs his adoration of them both into the sheets.

“We miss you when you’re away,” Will mumbles after a while, sniffing and turning to rest his chin against Anthony’s shoulder. “Just as you talk about us, we think about you.”

Within his words, there is the hint of something more - beyond welcoming, beyond confirmation that Anthony’s feelings are returned in full. He feels it tug at him, a stray note sweetly plucked, but where others might grasp for the hint of invitation, Anthony nuzzles into a soft kiss, and lets the note linger into peaceful quiet once more. It is enough to know. He doesn’t need more than that.

“I can only imagine what you think about,” he teases softly. “Filthy things, I’m certain. You never fail to amaze me with the depravities you concoct for us.”

Turning to his side he wraps an arm over Will and Hannibal both, easing when two arms rest heavy over him in return. He leans to take a kiss from Hannibal, and then settles once more with his brow pressed to Will’s, eyes closing. Hannibal smooths a stray curl from Anthony’s face, and rests his lips parted against the nape of Will’s neck. Slow breaths take him in and hold him, a scent like warm winter spices that wraps itself around his heart and softly squeezes.

Softly, first, and then a little tighter.

Hannibal’s breath catches, unsteadied for a beat.

Tighter.

The sound he makes does not muffle against flushed skin and dark curls.

Tighter.

No hand presses to his face, no lips seek his own to kiss away what hurts him.

Tighter.

Hannibal squeezes his eyes shut and presses his fingers to them, until stars erupt blinding in the black behind his eyelids. He holds them there until dizzied, he’s forced to take a breath. A strange dampness wets his cheeks as he wipes his hand down his face, and he regards the shimmer on his fingers with confusion, glistening in the Florentine sun.

He blames the fountain in the courtyard for his misery, and finds his spite hollow. Considering once again the beauty of conflagration, Hannibal considers that even in other worlds, fire must burn just the same as in this one.

There can be no rebirth without destruction first.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Your husband didn’t wake from your uneasy dreams?” Anthony whispers, arching his body to allow Hannibal to peel his underwear off him as well, ducking his head to watch. He is comfortably semi-hard, contented by the familiar touch, comfortable to be pressed so close._
> 
> _“He did not dream them,” Hannibal says, and Anthony grins before slapping him gently against the thigh._
> 
> _“Semantics,” he complains, squirming a little and arching further into Hannibal’s arms, turning his head to kiss against his stubbled jaw. “Did he not wake when you woke from your uneasy dreams of me?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> **Please check the updated tags for chapter 5!**

_Participation_.

She watches. She says nothing. She trembles and Hannibal can tell that for once, for _once_ she actually sees him. Not as a figment, not as a shadow or a mask, not as a fascinating patient but as _himself_.

She watches, and once Hannibal has had his fill watching her, he ducks his head to follow the thick smear of blood along the parlor floor, where Anthony Dimmond drags himself to the door. He is a beautiful man, elegant and lithe, and clever, so clever. Hannibal loves him, even then, with struggling and pitched little breaths, with reaching hands and blood-messed hair.

He misses him, when he’s not there.

A step, a swallow, another, rinse, repeat. Over and over until Hannibal is standing over him, hands cupped beneath his chin, tilting his head enough so that he can see his wide eyes and parted lips -

“You scared me.”

“I didn’t think you would be awake so early,” Hannibal murmurs, fingers caressing the skittering pulse at Anthony’s neck, thumb stroking his jaw until the poet turns to kiss his hand, instead.

“The muse,” Anthony laments, adjusting how he was sitting on the couch before Hannibal came to greet him. “It pulls one from slumber and comforts for its own whims. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Uneasy dreams.”

It’s enough of an answer, and enough of a comfort when Anthony returns his kiss upside down, resting a hand against Hannibal’s wrist. He strokes his thumb against the tendons risen along the back of the doctor’s hand, and though their lips brush again, again, this too slows.

“You’re so tense,” Anthony tells him. He nuzzles a kiss against the hand that holds his face, lips parting on a sigh. “Come sit with me?”

“If I’m not interrupting.”

“Never.”

Hannibal hums, lets go of Anthony’s jaw and walks around the couch to settle into it, as the poet is. Without a word, Anthony shifts around, sets his head into Hannibal’s lap and hums contentment when a warm hand comes to rest in his hair.

“Will you tell me about it?”

“My dream?”

“Your dream,” Anthony agrees, bringing a hand up to cup against Hannibal’s knee, gently splay his fingers down his leg, back up again. “Perhaps I can interpret it. Recall some of my formative years when I had to study psychology as an elective. Tell you that a cigar is only a cigar.”

Hannibal eases into a breath of laughter. “That also means that a penis is only a penis,” he considers. “A far more troubling tautology considering where our minds may take us.”

“Is that what you dreamed about? No wonder you’re up so early.”

“No,” Hannibal smiles. “I dreamt of you.”

He fans his fingers softly over Anthony’s lips, watching as they part beneath his touch. Hannibal waits for the touch of a tongue, the press of teeth, a sigh warmly pulled from within. He waits. He waits for an answer, a musing, he waits for an easy laugh and he waits for breath and he waits until his hand begins to shake and he sets it back to the floor where he has laid Anthony out.

She has gone from the room, perhaps minutes ago - perhaps hours. He heard her sickness in the bathroom and then the running of water into the tub. In some way, he is grateful for that. It is a note of discord, a hammer to the string, to not hear the shower’s spray and soft, deep murmurs beneath it. He might, again.

There is nothing he would not do to hear those gentle sounds again.

There is nothing.

He wraps his hand in the poet’s scarf, lifting his head to remove it. It is clean, nearly, but for a few wet spots stained black against it. The blood has stopped, staunched with a formaldehyde powder made commonly available to taxidermists before it could permeate the floorboards. Hannibal sweeps a little of the white dust from Anthony’s cheek, and with no one watching but himself and God, he cradles the poet’s cheek in a gentle squeeze, and then begins to remove his clothing.

Soft skin and a dusting of hair from the navel down to the waistband of Anthony’s underwear. Hannibal sets his hand against it and closes his eyes when he hears the ghost of a laugh, breathy and quiet, still.

“Your husband didn’t wake from your uneasy dreams?” Anthony whispers, arching his body to allow Hannibal to peel his underwear off him as well, ducking his head to watch. He is comfortably semi-hard, contented by the familiar touch, comfortable to be pressed so close.

“He did not dream them,” Hannibal says, and Anthony grins before slapping him gently against the thigh.

“Semantics,” he complains, squirming a little and arching further into Hannibal’s arms, turning his head to kiss against his stubbled jaw. “Did he not wake when you woke from your uneasy dreams of me?”

“No, Will sleeps,” Hannibal murmurs, nuzzling soft lips against Anthony’s temple, against his soft, warm hair. “He does not have the curse of nightmares to plague him. He never did.” Hannibal’s lips slip over sticky blood and he inhales, opens his eyes and stares at the blood-smeared floor beneath them both.

Anthony looks smaller, in his arms, than he ever did in his mind.

In a chemical reaction, the reagents and their catalysts are consumed to create a product. No longer can the first materials be extracted once this change has taken place; no longer can one reverse what one has done. And so, with especially rare components, one must be certain that the result is desired enough to lose that which would be difficult - if not impossible - to replace.

Hannibal tells himself that he is certain, and it eases the strain he applies to Anthony’s arm to break it backward.

The bones collide like a gunshot, loud enough that Hannibal holds Anthony’s hand against his chest for a moment more as if to await sign that someone heard. There is no such reason for lacing their fingers together, glad that the Florentine heat has kept Anthony’s skin pliable, almost alive. Glad for the twitch of stiffening that for the length of one staggered heartbeat feels as though Anthony is squeezing his hand in reassurance.

He would understand what must be done for the result that Hannibal needs.

He would sacrifice his own time, he always did, to give them theirs.

With care, Hannibal lowers the poet’s arm to the floor, looking past the unnatural angle of it to study his body instead. Bared, now, tall and lean and beautiful. In the thin slits of darkness visible beneath his lashes, in the spread of his lips as if held in a moan, there is potential energy.

There was always that, in one world or another.

He runs his hands up Anthony’s side, turning him towards his right. His leg shifts, he draws closer to the floor, and Hannibal mutes the press of a sigh from his poet beneath the repetitive snap of ribs breaking beneath his hands. Dry kindling for the conflagration; a sacrifice for the pyre. Hannibal splits them one by one, and when he sets his fist to rest against Anthony’s sternum, he closes his eyes as if it might stop the shaking.

It isn’t the first time Hannibal has shattered a sternum to bring a stopped heart back to life.

He presses down, ducks his head over the young poet and parts his lips over Anthony’s in turn.

“ _Oh_ fuck -” Anthony bites his lip and grins, shivering as Hannibal rocks harder against him, cocks slicked together and the friction perfectly teasing. Neither need to fuck, not now, but the closeness is appreciated, as Hannibal drags hot and sloppy kisses over the poet’s throat, as Anthony draws his knees up around Hannibal and draws nails sharp down his back.

“You know, I was actually writing about you,” he says after a moment, voice low and purring, eyes hooded and lips parting when Hannibal leans to kiss him again, a deep and questioning hum for him to continue. “You and your husband. This house. Us.” Anthony groans and squeezes his thighs around Hannibal harder, clinging and tugging, nuzzling close as they rut pleasurably together.

“We have created a world for ourselves here, as who we want to be, as who we are together and with no one else.” A sharp gasp draws Anthony’s brows tight together and he moans, low and long, head back and lips tilted in a grin.

“We are in our own little paracosm,” he sighs. “Building blocks and shiny shattered objects. How long do you think we can build that sandcastle?”

Hannibal’s eyes draw up in the corners, and he grins against his poet’s mouth. “For as long as we can, of course.”

“But eventually the tide comes in -”

“No.”

“- and brings the walls down.”

With a low sound, something between a purr and a growl, Hannibal sucks another kiss beneath Anthony’s jaw. The man’s laugh fills him, satisfies, quenches for a moment the need to find Anthony’s pulse and feel it speed beneath his tongue. He knows where it should be, just there, cradled against his clavicle. Or just beneath his ear. Or along the elegant curve of his throat.

There is nothing.

He rocks forward, straddling the man, his hands no longer pressed to Anthony’s chest but beneath it. Over his forearms lays a blanket of skin pried free from the body beneath, tearing with a sound like rent burlap. Another push against moorings unwilling to yield to him, muscle clinging to dermis as if afraid to be bared.

“Does it scare you?” he asks, shoving forward again as Anthony’s stomach wrinkles against Hannibal’s inner elbows. He feels the first rise of collarbone beneath, the splintered shards sharp against his fingers. For a moment there he rests, choking down a swallow, and nuzzling beneath Anthony’s jaw. He kisses him, at the hollow of his throat, still intact, and feels his own breath pool back against his lips.

“The tide?”

“That there may be no tide at all. That perhaps we have, by some lucky turn of fate, constructed for ourselves a paradise.”

“It sounds more like purgatory,” Anthony grins, and Hannibal spreads his fingers wider, watching the shadows shift as his poet’s skin stretches tighter across. “Is it yours?”

Hannibal blinks, into sunken eyes grown darker, towards lips that part inviting for him to kiss again.

“It is, isn’t it,” Anthony sighs, head turning aside as Hannibal kisses harder beneath it. “A limbo of your own construction, an eternal waiting room.”

“A place I built for us,” Hannibal grits out, fingers digging sharper into the skin beneath him and Anthony makes a tiny sound, of pain or pleasure it’s hard to tell, but it pushes him closer against Hannibal, skin slick, now, with the sweat between them.

“It’s shattering,” he murmurs, and Hannibal shakes his head harder. He brings a hand to stroke Anthony’s hair from his face and smears his blood there instead, bright against his pale skin, dark against lips that were once pink and flush and perfect.

“No.”

Anthony just smiles, and Hannibal wants him to see, to understand, to feel this as it should be, as it is. Their world, for them, for him and Will and Anthony in it, together, all of them, a triad keeping each other upright and steady.

The skin comes away easier now, and Hannibal’s hands slip against the floor in the mess.

“It is not,” he breathes. “It is rooms upon rooms of sanctuary that _I_ let you into! That _we_ invited you to! And your words, your _words_ , they started the crack that shattered the ceiling, that pulled down the walls. Damn your words!”

Hannibal pants against Anthony’s chest and closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead against the slick skin there, shuddering when a hand slips into his hair and gently tugs it. They are spent, now, the poet and he, exhausted together in mutual warmth and pleasure. Hearts slowing, breath easing.

“I’ll change the words a little bit,” Anthony mumbles, dropping his hand away and letting it brush against the carpet by the couch. “The rhyme still feels off. And once that line is written, you can invite me back again.”

A grin, rakish and pleased. “You promised.”

“Always,” Hannibal whispers. He touches his lips to cloying skin, the sweetness of sweat and the metallic tang beneath. He seeks Anthony’s mouth and closes his own against it, again and again, and murmurs, “You are always welcome here.”

They lay together in stillness. The room is quiet but for the tap of fingernails against the floor, the patter of blood from severed limbs. Hannibal has taken his poet’s words from him, his voice, his throat, and so when he murmurs softly, Hannibal startles.

“Your husband is awake.”

He lifts his head from Anthony's chest. Hannibal can imagine the deeply drawn breath, a gasp, as Will stirs - he can see blue eyes blinking sleepily open. He sits back gingerly from the prone poet beneath him and looks toward the sound of unlikely footsteps, clicking against the floor.

_Observation._

The steps come closer and turn away, to another room, not nearing Hannibal but tempting him to come near. He leaves Anthony where he lies, doesn’t turn back at the small sound he makes - the susurrus of skin against fabric as he turns on the couch to rest and nuzzle against it.

Step after step Hannibal moves further into the house. Not to the bedroom, Will won’t be in there now, he goes to the bathroom first thing upon waking, and then the kitchen for coffee. Hannibal pauses, glances to the shiny chrome countertops he can just see through the doorway. He considers setting the coffee to brew, for them both, for them all. No. Later. Later, together, when he can have Will nuzzle between his shoulders and sway to a song he hums under his breath as Hannibal makes the coffee for them both.

He has a beautiful voice when he raises it.

To the stairs and up them, to the master bedroom and the bathroom through it. He starts to work buttons through the holes, one after the other, slipping the shirt and suit over his shoulders and down to the floor. His shoes, next, unlaced and left, not pushed carefully away. Socks then. Slacks and underwear. Hannibal goes to the shower and starts the water and waits for it to warm, waits for Will to come to him, as he always does. Perhaps from the walk-in closet, perhaps from the adjoining sun room.

He waits and the water warms, and Hannibal steps under the spray and lifts his face to it, feeling it pound against his eyelids and his cheeks, over his lips and down his throat. For a minute, it feels like rain. For a minute, he feels like he might cry.

Maybe this is what happiness feels like.

Cool hands wrap around Hannibal’s middle and a familiar stubbled cheek nuzzles against his shoulder.

“I slept in,” Will tells him, a purring tease of pleasure before kissing Hannibal’s shoulder.

“It’s good that you slept,” Hannibal answers. He grasps Will’s hands in his own, hands that have touched and caressed, have felt the gout of hot blood and the quickening pulse that pours it fast beneath skin, from it. Lifting them to his mouth, Hannibal sighs against the damp and presses Will’s fingers closed against his face. “I missed you.”

“When I was asleep?”

“I miss you always,” he says. “Any time your presence is absent, as if a part of me were cut away.”

“A severance.”

“An amputation. It is not impossible to live without you,” Hannibal murmurs, gathering the warm wetness between his lips, “but it is difficult. I feel it in every attempt to move, or breathe, or function. What I would not give to feel you there again, and make myself whole once more.”

“Including -”

“Yes.”

“Him.”

“Yes,” Hannibal whispers.

Another soft nuzzle, pushing Hannibal further under the spray as Will’s arms slip from around Hannibal and rest on his hips, then slowly, gently, he turns his husband to him. Will doesn’t look up, he looks down at the water swirling pink into the drain. Blood and viscera and pieces of skin that had caught under Hannibal’s nails.

An amputation. Self-administered.

Will’s fingers rest beneath Hannibal’s chin and lift it, blue eyes seeking his beneath the warm rain of water against them, and gently Will smiles.

“You know he’ll be back. He wanders,” Will says, stepping close and leaning in to kiss against the blood running rivulets down Hannibal’s neck, down over his chest. Will’s fingers splay in the thick hair, against the soft skin beneath, to the pounding heart beat.

Hannibal doesn’t let his eyes close, as he normally might, he won’t risk turning away and losing another anchor in the place that he built. And this man, his Will, he is the foundation. For him to go would shake what walls remain; for him to go now would leave nothing. Hannibal’s throat jerks in a swallow, clicking loud, and he draws a breath when Will’s fingers tug.

“Not this time, I fear,” he murmurs. Lifting a hand, he trails his knuckles down Will’s scruffy cheek and rests them beneath his chin, bringing him closer to kiss, his own hand in the way, fingers pressed across parted lips, his own and Will’s, brushing past. “But I have you, here with me. Don’t I?”

“You get sentimental in the mornings,” Will mumbles against him, reaches past Hannibal to get the sponge, the soap to begin to wash them both, and Hannibal wonders if perhaps he has finally lost his mind. He wonders if this is what he had done to Will, years ago, if this was what he had made this man feel, before he brought him close, helped him heal, helped him hate, helped that hate become -

“Do I?”

“Often,” Will laughs, working the soap into a lather against his palm. “You claim to be entirely emotionless, you put on such a facade. But I know you beyond that.” A sly grin up at Hannibal before Will flicks his wet curls from his eyes and tilts his chin up. “You gave me that gift.”

“Of seeing me?”

“Knowing you,” Will amends, stroking the sponge gently over Hannibal’s chest, up to his neck, suds slipping pink down his body. “I saw before, I will see after.”

The ancient floorboards creak on the landing outside the bathroom. Hannibal lets his attention turn briefly to the door, a smile appearing from habit, welcoming and warm for their poet to come and join them. The presence there lingers, listening, Hannibal wants to call to him but his voice catches in his throat and his brows draw in when he finds himself, childlike once more, unable to push words past his lips. He knows, turning back to Will, that Anthony will not come to them now. He knows, burying his face against Will’s neck, that broken men cannot walk.

“So long as you are with me, I need nothing else,” he whispers. Draping an arm around Will’s shoulders, he twines heavy, wet curls between his fingers. Hannibal brings his other hand to Will’s arm, slides it to his back, cradles him close as a small sound escapes the other man.

A laugh.

A sigh.

A sob.

Will’s hands come up to cling to him in turn, one out still to hold the sponge, the other digging into Hannibal’s arm as though he cannot fathom, ever, letting him go. Another little sound, just heard above the white noise of the water, and Will nuzzles against Hannibal’s neck.

“Hannibal,” he whispers, and Hannibal thinks of early mornings, when the same voice had woken him, the same man whose nose would wrinkle in pleasure as Hannibal hummed that he was awake, even when he refused to open his eyes fully. He thinks of holding him close and feeling Will breathe against him, the fussy sounds he would make when Hannibal shifted. He thinks of the way Will’s lips taste, that gentle sweetness, like grapes still on his tongue, or figs fresh in summer.

“Hannibal, I’m bleeding,” Will tells him.

He shakes his head, and clutches his fingers tight in Will’s hair. No, it is the water from their shower that spills hot around his feet. It is the soap that runs viscous between their bodies. Will’s hand slides from him and he spreads it over his stomach, that soft skin that Hannibal traces his mouth against when they lie in bed together, that tender flesh at which he worships with warm hands and gentle kisses. No.

_No._

The sound that splits from Will’s lips is neither laugh nor sob, but agony made audible. He snares his arm shaking around Hannibal’s neck as his feet slip against the tile, and Hannibal watches helpless as he tries to hold Will to him. The water circles the drain in scarlet. Will’s belly widens into a ravenous maw, a gaping mouth parting red.

“Will,” he breathes, sinking an arm around Will’s waist to keep him standing. His touches stain crimson over pale skin, scruffy cheeks, pink lips. “I need you to come back. Do you understand? I cut out what was not needed. I cut out what would have made us ill. I need you to -”

Hannibal’s voice gives way. The imago in his arms is only his own bare body, held tight by himself, beneath the water running cold. Footsteps stride softly away from the door and only when Hannibal hears the door to the bedroom close, does he let a silent shudder shake his shoulders.

\---[x]---

It’s cool, but warm enough to make one forget that winter is just outside the window, covering the grasses and trees and the rough path with a dusting of snow. Will has the kettle boiling, an old heavy whistling thing he had found in a market somewhere and had never felt the need to replace. It works fine, it does its job, and certainly makes life easier when his coffee machine is coughing its last and he won’t be able to get into the city for a few days yet to get it fixed.

The windows fog and he wipes a smear clear with the palm of his hand, just looking. When it fogs over again, Will turns away and goes deeper into the house to grab a sweater to shrug onto his thin form, now that the warmth of the shower has finally worn off enough to feel the tendrils of cold.

The kettle whistles just as there is a knock on the door, and Will hums displeasure, deciding, after a moment of shrill screaming from his stove, to just get the door instead. It takes a fumble, first with the main door, then the screen one, but when it’s open, Will’s smile splits to a grin, breath steaming in the cold air as he tilts his head and rests his shoulder against the doorframe.

“Thought you’d never get here.”

Behind him, the kettle stops whistling, and a mild curse is whispered through the house before there’s a sound of heavy footfalls.

Anthony doesn’t even bother to dress in the mornings anymore, apparently entirely immune to the cold in his thin shirt and Will’s boxers that sit snug and comfortable against his hips. He presses his chin down against Will’s shoulder and hums, smile just as wide, just as delighted.

“You almost missed the party,” he murmurs, finally moving around Will to step up to Hannibal and hold the lapels of his heavy coat in his hands, pulling him down to kiss. “How was Florence?”

Hannibal’s smile is soft beneath the lips of their impetuous poet. He lifts a hand to stroke down a bearded cheek, raising Anthony’s chin and seeking between dark eyes that carry their own inner light, like stars piercing the night sky.

“A trial,” he answers. Another kiss is shared, brief and warm, before he turns to the man who regards him with a lifted brow, glasses settled on the end of his nose. Hannibal touches a finger to their center, and slips them higher up Will’s nose. “It was not the same without you.”

Before Will can protest - and blissfully ignoring when he does - Hannibal snares his arms around his husband’s waist and lifts him. Will’s bare toes drag against the floor and his arms drape over Hannibal’s shoulders as they kiss, lips tangling, tongues ensnared, as if they had never done so before. As if they had not done so countless times.

It feels new again.

Hannibal supposes that it is.

Anthony steps back to let the dogs barrel out into the snow, giving big brown Maggie a pat as she pads by. He closes the screen door softly, and pads on quiet feet to snare his arms around Hannibal’s waist. His breath is hot between Hannibal’s shoulders, despite the weight of the wool overcoat he wears, the layers beneath.

“Did you miss us?” Anthony asks, and Will snorts out a laugh, grinning. The poet just grins, bright eyes over Hannibal’s shoulder to meet Will’s, narrowing in pleasure.

“It never hurts to ask,” he says.

Hannibal sets Will down and ducks his head to breathe him in with closed eyes. The warmth and sweetness of him, the oils in his hair, the dogs and cheap shampoo. The lingering smell of sex, between him and the poet behind him. He smells perfect. He smells alive. He smells like home.

Dark eyes open to a dark room and stone walls. Enough space to pace twice, perhaps three times to the bars that frame one wall of his room, that give access to the corridor beyond, the hospital beyond that. The doctor hums. It must still be too soon to have the lights on to simulate daylight for the prisoners kept here, must still be within the comforting realms between quite late and too early.

He watches the corridor a moment longer, hears nothing but the sniffing a few cells down, where one man is crying, the heavy breathing of another who had found the comfort of sleep. Hannibal doesn’t care for this room. He doesn’t care for the acoustics of it, the size, the arrangement. He doesn’t care for many things, anymore.

So he just lets his eyes close again, in comfortable slumber, his mind seeking like gentle hands through a lightless room for the switch. He seeks and he sighs, and the smell of Wolf Trap fills his nostrils instead, covering immediately the disinfectant and stale breath that had permeated his prison cell.

_Did you miss us?_

He smiles, freeing one arm to drape it back around the lanky poet who presses against him insistent, a friend missing another, a lover missing their other part.

“Always,” Hannibal tells him.

_Always._

**Author's Note:**

>  **“paracosm”**  
>  — (noun) Psychology. Paracosm is an extremely rare word defining the imaginary world constructed in one’s mind, specifically by children. It is an infinite fantasy, anything can exist from animals to aliens and entities foreign to outsiders. Anything is possible in this fantasy milieu, one has their own language, experience, geography and history. Parcosm is usually developed as a result of high creativity, problem-solving, and others theorize: high intelligence.


End file.
